I was working on my video game for the third straight day. I’d opened up my laptop but it was running low on batteries and my electricity was cut off. I grabbed a bag of cheetos that I'd wrapped up and put next to my computer in case I got hungry. I didn’t normally like to eat these because they’d get dust on my keyboard but it looked like I wasn’t going to be getting any work done.

I could stay in the house for weeks at a time, only needing to leave for the occasional grocery run. It was actually impressive to my brother and sister how little I could need to see the outside. To be fair, this was a particularly gnarly stretch of time I’d stayed inside. My brother even came to check on me. His wife didn’t come with him. He was getting worried about me. I had stayed in my house because I was a few days away from launching and a few hours away from finishing my videogame. I’d taken all the alpha tester’s notes and implemented them into my game. This was going to be the cream of the crop solo dev rpg. One that focused on the political structure of a fantasy world.

My brother didn’t get what I was doing. He was some big wig hedge fund manager that would go on and on about how I should have accepted funding so I could actually pay myself a salary. It was important, sure, but that would mean I’d need to take the orders of some suits who had no clue what the vision in my head would look like. They’d start asking me to add the tropes you usually see in an rpg. Level tree, loot system. Blah, blah, blah. Those tropes were fun but I was not eager to place them in my game. That being said, not accepting money had its challenges. Like, as mentioned, I did not have electricity. I opened the fridge and the powerful stench of foodstuff gone bad caused me to close it. I sighed, grabbing my backpack and stuffing my laptop inside of it. It looked like I’d have to go to a local coffee shop to finish my magnum opus. I was so amped I almost left my house without taking a shower first.

I walked into the shower and started it, grabbing the conditioner and rubbing it into my greasy hair. Trickles of the streams of the shampoo got onto my wet shower floor and as I put back the shampoo, it fell out of my hand and landed on the floor. A thirty dollar bottle of shampoo my sister had bought me, all over the shower floor. I wanted to scoop it back in as quickly as possible. I leaned down but bumped my head on the shower wall, my foot tried to step back and get footing but with the slicked floor, I fell. I fell out of my shower, grabbing my curtain and ripping them off the curtain rod. I went down like a tree, my hands flailing for something else to grab onto. When I collapsed on the floor, my head made sure to clip the toilet extra hard.

I opened my eyes. Fuck, that hurt, I thought, “That’s the last time I take a shower.” I joked to myself as I got back into the bath. Most of the conditioner had unfortunately washed away into the drain. I finished drying myself off and was on my way to the local coffee shop.

I approached the cute barista and mumbled that I needed tap water as an excuse to stick around and spend the next few hours in the shop. She was sweet and smiley. The exact type I went for. Talking to her put a smile on my face. I grabbed the cup of water and made sure to put a little extra sauce in my ‘thank you.’ I knew she’d know what that meant. On my way back from the counter, I caught myself smiling in a mirror. That was when I saw my side profile. Yikes. I looked at my out-of-shape body. The sun hadn’t hit me in a couple of days but the food I’d been eating was working overtime on my pours. I had pale skin and acne. It suddenly made me very self-conscious. I quickly glanced back at the cute barista, who was helping someone else. I finished walking to my seat and opened up my laptop, only to be greeted by the black mirror of the screen.

Woof. I thought to myself, No money. Yet. No health. For now. No girl. My choice. I felt a little sting as I went through a rolodex of the bad choices I’d taken to get here. I sighed and opened up my laptop, booting up the game engine I had created. The smile found its way back onto my face. I had created a game engine. I was about to make one of the most in depth games a solo dev has ever created. I knew how to work hard. It was just hard to work hard on something I… didn’t care about. Status. Money. Romance? Didn’t I care about those things? Or did I just give up before even trying.

I worked on my game for a few hours before getting a text from my brother. Apparently he had stopped by the house again and was shocked I wasn’t there. He thought there was a home invasion. I told him to meet me at the coffee shop and he said he’d brought my niece. Lucilla.

It was going to be nice to see her at least. I kept cranking away at my video game, making sure to shape up any last minute hit boxes and make any last-minute game-breaking glitches look intentional.

I looked at an NPC my brother had voiced.

“My Liege,” It said, “You’ve taken over the country. How will you rule?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

My brother had worked hard at the right things. Went to a great school on a sports scholarship. Met his wife in college. He’d put the time and effort in. I heard a bell jingle from the door opening and Lucilla ran up to me and hugged me. I hugged her tight and showed her and my brother the finishing touches on my game. My brother nodded, and smiled but reminded me that he’d left the video game stuff when his wife became pregnant with baby number two. Gender yet to be determined.

“Hey, bro,” I said, “Can I ask you a vulnerable question?” I asked hesitantly.

My brother looked at me, unsure of what I was going to say. Then he leaned into his daughter’s ear and said, “Go play outside. Daddy and Uncle Egen will be right out,”

Egen. My name was Aiden but I guess it was a little hard for a two year old, so she called me Egen and it stuck. Lucilla ran off outside with her iced chocolate.

My brother looked at me seriously and said, “What’s up?”

I sighed and looked back at the store counter, “You think I could ask that girl over there out?”

My brother let out a little chuckle that doubled over as a sigh of relief, “Jesus, Aiden. I thought you were going to ask for money. Yeah, you could ask that girl out if you wanted to,”

“Do you think she’ll say yes?” I asked.

My brother sipped from his hot tea, “I think I know someone who’s better fit to answer the question.”

I nodded. I stood up, sweat between my clammy hands, and walked up to the counter. She gave me that same smile as before and asked what I needed. I said ‘napkins.’ and walked back to my brother, giggling at my horrendous failure.

“I’m this lowly programmer,” I said as I closed my fully charged laptop. I was done. Finished. My life’s work completed and ready to be published on every major platform, “I don’t have something a girl like her could want. I need to go to the gym. I need to… I’ll sell this game, then I’ll be back. With more confidence.”

“You got smarts,” My brother said as he wiped up the table with the extra napkins I’d gotten.

“Smarts.” I said, “Smarts only works if you have a face people will listen to. I wasn’t a bad looking guy when we were young. I thought I did everything I needed to do. Stay out of the sun. Learn a skill.”

We both started walking outside, “There are a lot more skills than that you need to learn, Aiden,”

“Yeah, I guess so. If only though. You give me a second chance, ten years back and I’d dominate. I know exactly what I’d do too. I’d have started programming earlier. Hit the gym more.”

“You still can,” My brother said, turning his head at me, “You start now and ten-years-from-now you will be saying ‘I’m glad I started ten years ago.’”

“Nah,” I grumbled, “Too late. Now I’ll just focus on programming.”

“Daddy, look! A puppy!” Lucilla cried out, a stray dog shot past her and ran into oncoming traffic.

“LUCI, DON’T!”

My brother once scaled a building naked because one of his boys dared him. When I asked him what was going through his mind, I remembered distinctly what he told me, “Mostly just where my hands and feet would go next. He was captain of the football team, calling plays when a state championship was on the line. He’d been a guest speaker for his college. That involved speaking to a crowd of one thousand people. He never broke a sweat. But when he called out for his daughter… I had never heard my brother so scared in his life.

In that moment, my so-called brilliant mind flashed through the sequence of events. My niece, his daughter, was running into oncoming traffic. There was a semi-truck that was clearly behind schedule because it was going way over the speed limit. Mr. Act would be in front of that truck in no time flat and push sweet Luci out of the way… and she’d grow up without a dad. A wife would lose her husband. A good man would lose his life.

What did I have to lose?

I dropped my laptop bag. I burst forward with a speed I hadn’t shown since little league, and for the first time in our lives, I’d beaten my brother in a foot race.

I might as well have tackled my niece like she was on the enemy team. I basically punted her out of the way. But I had gotten her to safety, right before that big bad truck made contact with me instead.

*Author's Note*

Is this the end of our new hero?! Should he have asked out that barista before he died?! What's a time you felt like you weren't brave that you now regret?

Thank you for reading the first chapter of my story! If you liked this chapter please give me a follow!