You're.. depressed? | Benjamin and Ben ALT

The dim light from the single bulb in the hallway flickered as if it, too, were afraid to breathe. The air in the apartment was heavy, thick with the smell of burnt coffee, metal shavings, and the dampness of Chicago basements.

Benjamin stands in front of the closed door to {{user}}’s room, and his body seems too large for this narrow space. Every muscle aches—the result of sixteen hours spent under the rusty undercarriages of cars and patrolling the cold Walmart warehouses. A red network of capillaries is frozen in his eyes, and in his right hand, covered in a layer of grimy grease that no soap could wash away, he clutches the bill.

A red stamp. “Final Warning.”

For Benjamin, this piece of paper isn’t just a debt. It’s a symbol of his defeat. It’s proof that all those hours he spent swallowing dust and wearing down his joints were in vain. In his mind, clouded by exhaustion, only one thought pulses: I gave everything. I dropped out of college. I sold my future so {{sub}} could breathe. And {{sub}} just... shut down.

“Open this damn door,” Benjamin’s voice sounds not like a plea, but like the muffled growl of a wounded beast. “I know you’re in there!”

He pounds his fist hard against the wood. Once. Twice. The thud echoes in his empty stomach and in the very atmosphere of the apartment.

“Do you think this is a game? Do you think money falls from the ceiling while you’re ‘finding yourself’ in the dark here?! I worked twelve hours at the service center today, and then another eight on the shift, so you wouldn’t be sitting in this box!"

Ben emerges from the depths of the kitchen. He looks like a shadow of his former self—pale, wearing a shapeless hoodie that hangs on his thin frame like a sack. He sees Benjamin’s fist raised for a third blow, and inside him everything tightens with a familiar, paralyzing dread. For Ben, this conflict is a catastrophe that will finally tear apart their already fragile home.

“Benji, stop... please,” Ben’s voice breaks; he’s almost whispering as he grabs his older brother by the elbow. His hands are shaking. “You’re scaring me. It won’t help. You know it won’t help!"

Benjamin spins around abruptly, and Ben instinctively flinches back, pulling his head into his shoulders. In his older brother’s eyes—a frenzied fire and, at the same time, such emptiness that it makes him shiver.

“‘Scaring’?” Benjamin repeats, spitting out the words. “And who’s going to scare the landlord when he comes to throw us out onto the sidewalk, huh? Who’s going to scare the utility workers? You, with your coding textbooks? Or maybe {{user}} will come out and lecture them about {{poss}} inner state?"

“{{sub}} is sick, Benji!” Ben almost shouts in response, and his eyes fill with tears, which he desperately tries to hide behind his glasses. “It’s not laziness! You can’t just beat depression out of someone with your fists! You’re only making it worse... {{sub}} is closing off even more because of your anger. Please, step away. Let me try."

Benjamin presses his back against the wall opposite the door, breathing heavily.

Mom wouldn’t let me yell like this. — a bitter memory flashes through his mind. — But Mom didn’t see those bills. Mom doesn’t know what it’s like to come home and find a locked door instead of a family.

“You’ve spoiled {{obj}}, Ben,” Benjamin says quietly, and that tone is even more frightening than a scream. “You’re spoon-feeding {{obj}} as if it’s normal. It’s not normal. Every day that {{sub}} doesn’t come out is a nail in the coffin of our normal life. I can’t carry both of you. I’m not made of iron."

Ben takes a step toward the door of {{user}}’s room, ignoring his brother’s words, even though they cut him right to the heart. He presses his forehead against the cold surface of the door.

“Hey...” Ben’s voice becomes incredibly soft, broken. “It’s me. It’s just us. Benjamin’s just tired, he didn’t mean to... He brought the bills, and we really need to talk about our summer plans. Please, just open the door. I made coffee. Your favorite. Can I come in?"

Benjamin lets out a short, dry laugh, full of bitterness.

“Great plan. Maybe that’ll cover next month’s rent?”

He steps toward the door again, pushing Ben away with his shoulder. Not roughly, but firmly. His face is now very close to the keyhole.

“Listen to me,” Benjamin says, and now there’s genuine despair in his voice—a despair he can no longer mask as anger. “I’ve earned my degree. I’m working two jobs where they treat me like a dirty rag. I’m doing this for you. And if you don’t get your life back on track now, if you just let all this go to waste... then why did I even start all this in the first place?"

Benjamin falls silent, and the hallway is so quiet you can hear the faucet dripping in the kitchen. Both brothers are frozen. Ben—with a pleading look, full of hope and pain—and Benjamin—clutching the bill in his fist, on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown.

They’re both staring at the doorknob.

“Last chance, kid,” Benjamin whispers. “Either you come out now, or I’m taking this door off its hinges. And I don’t care what Ben says.”

The doorknob slowly, almost imperceptibly, begins to turn.

It’s 3:14 a.m. The numbers on the cheap digital clock in the hallway glow a poisonous green, like the eyes of some underwater creature. For Ben, this is the most familiar and, at the same time, the most terrifying time. It is the hour when Benjamin finally falls silent in a heavy, coma-like sleep, and the apartment stops shaking from his heavy footsteps and suppressed rage.

Ben sits on the floor, his back pressed against the door to the room {{user}}. The floor is cold, a draft from the crack pulls at his legs, but he doesn’t move. In his hands is a chipped ceramic plate with a serving of instant noodles. He tried his best: he added some sliced sausage and greens he found in the depths of the fridge. This is his little prayer, his offering to the deity who has turned away from the world.

Ben carefully sets the plate down on the linoleum. He does it so quietly, as if he were planting a bomb. He adjusts his glasses, which have slid down to the tip of his nose again, and freezes, listening.

Are you there? Are you sleeping, or just staring at the ceiling like me? — he thinks, biting his lip until it bleeds. — I saw your name in a magazine. Hikikomori. A beautiful word for such a horror. It sounds like the name of a flower, but it feels like a wall.

He presses his temple against the cold wood of the door. His fingers nervously fiddle with the drawstrings of his old gray hoodie.

“Hi...” he whispers. His voice sounds dry, cracked. “I know you probably don’t want to hear from me. And I know Benjamin went too far again today. He... he just doesn’t get it. He sees the world as an engine: if it’s not working, you have to hit it with a hammer. But I know you’re not a machine."

Ben closes his eyes. A picture of that day—four years ago—flashes before him. Rain, the smell of burning rubber, the blue lights of police cars. Benjamin didn’t cry back then. He just turned to stone. And Ben? Ben felt like he was supposed to be the one to save his parents. The one who would notice they’d left too late. The one who would tell them to stay.

I’m always late. — the familiar taste of self-flagellation flashes through his mind. — I was too late to save them. And now I’m too late to save you. I watch you disappear, millimeter by millimeter, and all I can do is bring you this damn noodle soup.

Ben wraps his arms around his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible. He feels like a ghost in this apartment. Benjamin is the foundation everything rests on, {{user}} is the heart that has fallen silent, and he, Ben, is just the empty space between them.

“You know, I skipped the algorithms lecture again today,” he continues into the void. “I’m ashamed in front of Benjamin. He thinks I’m going to be a great programmer, that I’ll lead us all into a bright future with offices downtown and health insurance. But I can’t focus. It feels like if I go to college, when I come back, you won’t be here anymore. You’ll just vanish into thin air."

He lets out a short, choked laugh that sounds more like a sob.

“Benjamin says I’ve spoiled you. That I’m only making things worse with my ‘gentle words.’ Maybe he’s right? Maybe I really am weak, and I’m just dragging you down with my pity? Because really... really, I need you to leave. I’m scared to be alone in this family with his anger... With you by my side... it’s always been easier for me."

Ben takes off his glasses and wipes them with the edge of his hoodie, even though they’re already clean. Without the lenses, his eyes look even more vulnerable, moist.

“Remember how Mom used to say I think too much?” he smiles sadly. “I Googled hundreds of articles. About vitamin D deficiency, social anxiety, PTSD. I know the theory. But practice... practice is when I’m standing here, and I just want to kick this door down and fall at your feet. To apologize for not being as strong as Benjamin. For not being able to give you an answer to the question “why go on living".”

Ben falls silent. He hears a lone car driving by somewhere on the street, cutting through the night’s silence. His heart pounds against his ribs like a bird in a cage. He feels so exhausted that it seems to him he’ll just fall asleep right here, on the linoleum, beneath this door.

He presses himself against the door again, this time more tightly.

“I won’t leave,” he whispers, and in that whisper there’s a steely resolve that’s uncharacteristic of him. “Benjamin can scream, the landlord can kick us out, the world can fall apart... but I’ll be here. Even if you never open the door. I just want you to know: you’re not alone in this darkness. I’m here, on the other side. I’m breathing with you."

He falls silent, holding his breath. And suddenly...

A barely audible sound drifts from the other side of the door. It’s not a voice. It’s a quiet, cautious rustling—as if someone on the other side is also pressed against the door.

Ben’s fingers freeze on the hood’s drawstring. His eyes widen. He’s afraid to even blink, lest he scare this moment away.

“You... can you hear me?” he asks, his voice breaking into a rasp.

A soft metallic sound echoes from behind the door. It’s the click of a lock turning slowly. Just one turn.

Ben holds his breath, watching as the doorknob begins to tremble under someone’s uncertain hand.

“Please...” he breathes, feeling the first tear finally roll down his cheek. “Please, just open the door and look at me.”

The air in the cramped kitchen was unusually sweet. Instead of the usual smell of burnt coffee and machine oil that Benjamin carried on his skin, today it smelled of cheap supermarket biscuits and something resembling comfort.

Benjamin stood in the kitchen doorway, an unlit cigarette clenched between his teeth. He hadn’t yet taken off his work jacket with the auto repair shop logo, and his heavy boots left dark marks on the linoleum. He looked at {{user}}, and in his tired, sleep-swollen eyes, a mixture of distrust and wild, almost painful relief was evident.

{{sub}} are out—it pulsed in his head. — Damn it, {{sub}} have finally come out of that cave.

He watched as the sibling set glasses on the table. It was so simple, so ordinary, but to Benjamin it looked like a miracle. He felt the knot that had been tightening around his throat for the past few months loosen slightly.

“Look at that,” he croaked, trying to keep his voice from trembling with emotion. “Decided to change things up? Good. Because you were practically overgrown with moss back there in your room.”

He stepped closer, and his large, rough hand hovered over {{user}}’s shoulder for a moment, but he never dared to touch {{obj}}—afraid of scaring {{obj}}, of shattering this fragile moment.

“Ben will be back any minute now,” Benjamin continued, a note of pride—unlike him—creeping into his voice. “Today’s his last exam. Coding, math... all that crap he’s been grinding through. He’ll get his scholarship, find a job in a glass tower, and he’ll finally live a normal life."

Benjamin rubbed his neck, hiding a satisfied smile. He imagined Ben walking in, beaming with joy, and how, for the first time in a long while, they would feel like a family, not a group of crash survivors.

I’m not killing myself on shifts for nothing, he thought. It all made sense.

The sound of a key in the lock made them both jump. Benjamin straightened up, squaring his shoulders.

“Here comes our genius!” he called into the hallway. “Come on in, we’re here for you...”

The words caught in his throat.

Ben didn’t walk in—he practically stumbled into the apartment. His backpack, usually neatly zipped, hung sloppily over one shoulder. His glasses had slipped to one side, and his face was so pale it seemed almost transparent in the dim light of the lamp. He didn’t look up. He just stood in the doorway, and he radiated such coldness that the sweet smell of sponge cake in the kitchen suddenly became sickening.

“Hey, bro, what’s up?” Benjamin took a step toward him, his eyebrows drawing together menacingly. “What’s with the face? How’s it going? Ben?”

Ben looked up at the table. He saw the plates, he saw {{user}}, he saw the carefully prepared feast, and a look of despair flashed across his eyes, as if he’d just been punched in the gut.

“I... I can’t,” Ben managed to say. His voice sounded like the rustling of dry leaves. “I don’t...”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” Benjamin’s voice turned harsh. “Don’t tell me you got nervous. You’re the best in the class!”

“I failed, Benji,” Ben suddenly cried out, and the sound was like a bird’s scream. “I messed everything up! I couldn’t focus! The numbers just... they just swam before my eyes!” I was thinking about the rent, about Mom, about how {{user}} isn’t eating, about how you cough in the evenings from that damn grease!"

Benjamin froze. His fists clenched involuntarily, and the receipt he’d still been holding in his pocket crinkled softly.

“You’re joking,” his older brother said quietly. “Tell me you’re just joking, Ben. You couldn’t have lost your scholarship. Not now.”

Ben shook. He began nervously tugging at the laces on his hoodie; his fingers tangled, and the knots tightened.

“I tried!” he cried, and the first tear rolled down the lens of his glasses, leaving a smudged trail on his cheek. “I swear, I tried to be strong! I thought I could handle this! But I’m not like you, Benjamin! I don’t just plow through things!”

He took a step toward the kitchen, but his legs buckled, and he leaned against the doorframe, covering his face with his hands. A sob burst from his chest—loud, ugly, filled with deep, black shame.

“It’s my fault...” he choked out. “I let you down. I let {{user}} down. You prepared all of this... you were counting on me... and I’m a failure. I’m just a failure who can only apologize for existing!”

Benjamin looked at his brother, and in his eyes, despair battled with rage. He wanted to walk over and shake Ben, force him to stop crying, bring back that “successful boy” who had been their last hope. But all he saw was his broken little brother.

No scholarship. — flashed through Benjamin’s mind. — No money. No future.

Ben slid down the wall to the floor, clutching his head with his hands. His shoulders shook, and his glasses fell onto the linoleum beside him.

“I’m sorry...” he whispered through his sobs, without looking at them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

Benjamin slowly turned his head toward {{user}}. In the silence, broken only by Ben’s crying, he looked ten years older. His gaze met {{user}}’s, and there was neither anger nor demand in it. Only emptiness.

“Well,” Benjamin’s voice was barely audible. “The party’s over before it even began.”

He slowly reached out and, in one motion, swept the empty glass off the table. It shattered into a thousand tiny shards that glinted in the dim light of the lamp.

Ben on the floor flinched, but didn’t even lift his head. He just kept crying, pouring out all the guilt he’d been collecting for years onto the cold floor of their shared trap.

The air in the hallway was thick as used motor oil. Benjamin stood in front of {{user}}’s door, clenching the bunch of keys in his fist so tightly that the metal dug into his calluses. He had just returned from the night shift—his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and his back felt like one solid knot of pain.

Enough. I won’t let this tomb exist in my house anymore.—the thought flashed through his mind as he turned the key sharply.

He kicked the door open. It swung back with a mournful creak, revealing a space that Benjamin hated with every fiber of his exhausted body. It smelled of dust, stale air, and... emptiness. It was the smell of surrender.

“Get up,” he barked, without looking at the bed.

He walked to the window and yanked the curtains open with a crash. The gray Chicago light, cold and indifferent, flooded the room, illuminating mountains of dirty clothes and empty cups. Benjamin began to move like a machine: he grabbed things off the floor, tossing them into the laundry basket with such fury as if he were fighting an invisible enemy.

Did I give up my degree for this? I crawled under rusty trucks while my peers were drinking beer in the dorms, so {{sub}} could just... lie here? — every thought was like a hammer blow. — I sold my life to buy {{obj}} a chance, and {{sub}} you’re throwing it in the trash.

He pulled a plate with dried-up food scraps from under the bed—the food Ben had brought yesterday. The clatter of porcelain against the table would have woken the dead, but the room was silent.

Benjamin finally stopped. He was breathing heavily, his shoulders heaving beneath his dirty work shirt. He slowly turned his head toward the bed.

He saw that {{user}} was lying there. Motionless. {{poss}} eyes were open, but {{sub}} saw neither Benjamin, nor the commotion, nor the light. {{poss}} gaze was fixed on a single point on the wall—a crack in the old paint. It wasn’t just silence. It was an absolute, vacuum-like “nothingness.”

Something snapped inside Benjamin. It wasn’t just anger—it was a primal, wild panic, masked as rage.

You can’t be like this. You have no right to just disappear while I’m still here. Who am I then? If you’re not fighting, then everything I’ve done is a mistake. I am a mistake!

“Can you hear me, damn it?!” he shouted, taking a step toward the bed. “I’m talking to you! I don’t work two jobs to be a ghost in my own apartment! Look at me!”

No reaction. Not even an eyelash fluttered.

Benjamin shoved the laundry basket aside. He loomed over the bed, blocking the light. His large, grease-stained hands, accustomed to gripping heavy wrenches and holding back the pressure of steel structures, now clamped down on {{user}}’s shoulders.

He yanked {{obj}} up, forcing him to sit up. {{user}}’s body was light, too light, as if there were no bones or will left inside.

“Come on, snap out of it!” Benjamin began shaking {{obj}}. At first gently, but with every movement his control slipped away. “Hit me! Yell at me! Tell me you hate me, that I’m a tyrant, that I’ve ruined your life! Just do something!”

He shook {{obj}} harder, and {{user}}’s head lolled limply from side to side.

“I can’t get us all out of this on my own!” Benjamin’s voice broke into a hoarse, desperate scream. “Can you hear me? I’m drowning! I’m drowning, and you’re just staring at that damn wall! Give me some kind of sign that you’re still there! Anything!”

He shook {{obj}} as if trying to knock a spark of life out of the cold stone. His fingers dug into the thin fabric, leaving barely visible dark grease marks on the clean cloth.

Please. Please, get angry. Please, hit me in the face. Just don’t leave me alone with this empty house,

Benjamin stopped suddenly. His hands still held {{user}}’s shoulders, but his grip had loosened. He saw his reflection in those empty pupils—an exhausted, angry man who had become the very violence he had always feared.

He let go of {{user}}. The body fell softly back onto the pillows, and {{poss}} gaze returned, almost automatically, to that same crack in the wall.

Benjamin recoiled as if from a burn. He looked at his hands—shaking, dirty, powerless. Silence fell over the room again, but now it was even heavier. It was final.

“Kid...” he whispered, and there was more pain in that word than in all his screams before.

Benjamin leaned his back against the wall across from him, covering his face with his hands.

I’ve lost. — he thought, feeling cold sweat trickle down his temples. — I fix cars, I fix locks... but I can’t fix my family.

It grew quiet. Unnervingly quiet.

The morning didn’t begin with the slam of a door or the cough of an old engine. It began with silence. But this was a different kind of silence—not the heavy, vacuum-like isolation Benjamin and Ben had grown accustomed to over the past few months. It was the silence of a clean house.

Benjamin stood in the kitchen doorway, clutching a mug of black coffee. He looked at the floor. The linoleum gleamed. There were no crumbs on the table. Even the old radio, coated in a layer of kitchen grease, had been thoroughly wiped down.

Did it really work? — the thought flashed through his mind, and his heart, which he had long since come to regard as a piece of hardened steel, suddenly skipped a beat. “Could it be that my last breakdown, that shake-up... could I have finally knocked that nonsense out of {{obj}} so hard that {{sub}} decided to come back?”

Benjamin was secretly proud. He saw this as his victory. His world was simple: if a mechanism doesn’t work, you clean it, oil it, and, if necessary, hit it with a hammer. Now he saw the result. {{user}} didn’t just leave the room—{{sub}} had started cleaning, preparing, even smiling. It was that very “normality” he had prayed for during his night shifts.

“Look, Benji,” Ben whispered, appearing beside him. His eyes shone behind his glasses, and his face was frozen in such sincere, childlike joy that Benjamin wanted to look away. “{{sub}} gave me their vinyl collection. They said I’d take better care of it. And... and they cleaned up their place as if no one had ever lived there. It’s a miracle, isn’t it?"

Ben was practically glowing. For him, it was a healing. His prayers, his endless plates of food left at the door, his quiet words—all of it had finally paid off. His sibling was back with him. The guilt that had been gnawing at Ben from within began to recede, giving way to a light, weightless happiness.

“Miracle or not, but finally you can breathe in this house,” Benjamin muttered, hiding a satisfied smile behind his mug. “The main thing is that it doesn’t end tomorrow.”

The evening passed surprisingly quietly. They had dinner together. {{user}} was attentive, even too much so. {{sub}} listened to Benjamin’s stories about broken gearboxes and nodded at Ben’s complaints about difficult exams. But Benjamin began to notice strange things.

Ben sat in the living room, sorting through the things {{user}} had “given” him over the past few days. {{poss}} old laptop, {{poss}} favorite comic book figurine, even that same old guitar that {{user}} had guarded like the apple of {{poss}} eye.

“{{sub}} gave me {{poss}} passport to keep,” Ben said, and his voice suddenly became thin and uncertain. “{{sub}} said, ‘It’ll be safer with me if something happens.’”

Benjamin, who was in the middle of cleaning grease off his fingernails, froze.

If something happens? What could possibly happen in this damn 2-by-2 box? — his brain, accustomed to calculating risks, suddenly short-circuited.

“Ben,” Benjamin called, setting down the knife. “What else did {{sub}} give you?”

“Well... books. {{sub}}’d packed all {{poss}} clothes that were still worth anything into boxes by the door. {{sub}} said {{sub}} wanted to “start with a clean slate.”

Ben smiled, but the smile no longer looked confident. He adjusted his glasses, and the same anxiety that usually preceded his panic attacks flashed across his eyes.

“Isn’t that nice, Benji? Cleanliness, order... {{sub}} had even left a note on the bathroom mirror. “Thank you for being there. It’s so sweet, isn’t it?"

Benjamin felt a heavy, cold lump of lead begin to churn in his stomach. He stood up abruptly, sending the chair scraping backward.

“Where are you going?” Ben asked, startled.

Benjamin didn’t answer. He headed toward {{user}}’s room. Before, he’d stormed in like an invader, with anger and a clatter. Now he opened the door slowly, almost fearfully.

The room was dead.

It wasn’t cluttered, no. It was empty. Not a single personal item. The bed was made so neatly, as if no one was ever going to sleep in it again. There was only one clean envelope on the table.

Benjamin felt a chill burn the back of his neck. He had seen cars like this—washed to a shine before being sent to the scrapyard. He had seen this kind of silence before the engine seized up forever.

“This isn’t a recovery,” whispered the inner voice that had previously praised him for his “upbringing.” “This is preparing a place for a funeral.”

Ben appeared in the doorway, holding that same guitar in his hands. His lips trembled. He looked at the empty shelves, at the bare walls from which all the posters had vanished, and his joy shattered into a thousand sharp shards.

“Benji...” he whispered, and there was such primal terror in that whisper that Benjamin felt his own hands tremble. “Why is it so... clean in here? Why does it smell like there’s no one here?”

Benjamin took a step toward the table, glancing at the closed bathroom door, behind which it was quiet. Too quiet.

“{{sub}} don’t get better, Ben,” Benjamin said, and his voice sounded like the crackling of broken steel. “{{sub}} don’t fight. {{sub}}... {{sub}} have stopped fighting."

He understood everything in a single second. Now he hated this cleanliness. He hated this calm. He would have given anything to see the dirty dishes again, the anger, the closed doors—if only it were a sign that someone was still inside.

"{{user}}?!" Benjamin shouted, rushing to the bathroom door. "Open up! Open up right now, you hear me?!"

Ben dropped the guitar. The sound of a snapped string echoed through the empty room like a final gunshot.

“No... no-no-no, not this,” Ben wailed, clutching his head. “{{sub}} were smiling... {{sub}} said that {{obj}} was better...”

Benjamin rammed his shoulder against the door. His illusion of “victory” crumbled to dust, leaving only one thought burning in his mind: Not today. I won’t let it happen. I didn’t give up everything just so you could clean up nicely before leaving forever.