The bar smelled like stale beer and regret. Liquor bottles lined the shelves like trophies of lost battles, their glassy reflections dancing under the flickering neon sign. Ren wiped down the counter with one hand, his other hand working a Rubik’s Cube beneath the bar, hidden from sight. His fingers trembled slightly as they twisted the cube in rapid succession, each movement a careful risk. One wrong move—not on the cube, but in getting caught—and his boss would make sure he never brought it here again.

He didn’t need to look. He knew the patterns by heart—the cross, the F2L, the last-layer algorithms. The click-click-click of the cube was barely audible under the clatter of empty glasses and the slurred conversations of customers who barely noticed him. But Ren noticed everything—the way his boss’s reflection lingered in the bar mirror, the way his coworker’s footsteps approached before turning away. He had seconds, maybe less, before someone paid attention.

A shadow shifted in the corner of his eye.

“Ren!”

The bark of his name sent a jolt through his spine. His fingers spasmed, nearly fumbling the cube, heart hammering as he shoved it deeper into his pocket. His stomach clenched. His boss’s eyes locked onto him, dark and scrutinizing, a sneer curling at the edge of his lips like he already knew the answer to a question he hadn’t asked yet.

“You deaf?” The man leaned against the bar, his presence heavy, reeking of stale cigarettes and sweat. His jaw tightened as he exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. “Glass ain’t gonna clean itself.”

Ren snatched a dirty glass so fast he nearly knocked over a bottle. His palms were slick with sweat, breath shallow, his heart a frantic drumbeat in his ears. He scrubbed aggressively, nodding, acting like his entire focus had been on work. The cube pressed against his ribs in his pocket, burning like a hidden ember, a reminder of how close he’d come to screwing up.

Jack, the trucker, let out a rough chuckle from his stool, his whiskey glass dangling lazily between calloused fingers. “Told you, kid. That thing’s got your brain rotted.” His bloodshot eyes scanned Ren with a smirk, amused at his discomfort.

Ren forced a smirk back, but it felt stiff, unnatural. “Nah,” he muttered, voice thin, “just keeps me awake.”

His boss lingered, eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. His tongue ran over his teeth, as if tasting a lie. Ren held his breath. One more second. Two. His throat tightened. 

Then, finally, the man grunted, shaking his head. He turned away, barking at another employee about restocking the whiskey. Ren’s shoulders slumped, but the tension coiled in his muscles refused to ease.

His pulse pounded, a restless energy surging beneath his skin. His fingers twitched with the urge to cube, to push the time lower, to shave off another fraction of a second—to take control of something, anything. But he couldn’t risk it. Not here. Not yet.

His mind drifted to the tournament he couldn’t afford, the record he couldn’t chase, the dream he had to keep buried beneath the weight of reality.

In his pocket, the cube waited. Scrambled. Like him.

Ren pushed open the warped wooden door, the hinges groaning in protest as he stepped into his room—a forgotten attic space that smelled of damp wood and dust. The bare bulb flickered, casting long shadows across the slanted ceiling and cracked walls. He shut the door behind him, leaning against it for a moment, his breath ragged, his body sagging under the weight of exhaustion.

The air was thick, and stale. A single mattress lay in the corner, sunken in the middle, the sheets bunched into a mess. His desk, littered with papers, broken pens, and a cheap digital timer, was the only sign that something alive existed in this place. His hands dug into his pockets, pulling out the cube, his only constant, his only escape.

He collapsed onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling, the wooden beams above him stained with water damage, like the place was rotting from the inside out. Just like him. The events of the night replayed in his head—the scrutiny, the humiliation, the way his boss’s eyes cut through him like he was nothing. Like he’d always be nothing.

His fingers twitched, restless. He sat up, legs crossed, the cube balanced between his palms. He took a deep breath, then twisted. Click. Click. Click. The sound filled the room, rhythmic, soothing, the only thing that made sense. The only thing that obeyed his control.

But the frustration gnawed at him. What was the point? He could be the fastest in the world, but what did that mean if he was stuck here, broke, invisible, going nowhere? He scrambled the cube again, hands moving faster now, anger building in his chest. Twist. Solve. Scramble. Again. Faster. Again.

He stopped suddenly, his hands trembling. The cube lay solved in his lap, but the satisfaction never came. The weight in his chest pressed harder, suffocating. His eyes burned, but he refused to let anything fall.

Outside, the wind howled against the roof, rattling the attic window. Ren exhaled sharply, gripping the cube tighter.

Tomorrow would be the same. The bar. The hiding. The pretending. The dream growing further out of reach.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. His stomach twisted when he saw the name on the screen.

Gloria.

He hesitated, fingers hovering over the screen before finally swiping to answer.

“Ren?” Her voice was soft, but with an underlying sharpness, like she was already sensing the weight in his silence. “You sound dead. Again.”

A tired smirk flickered across his lips. “You always know how to make a guy feel better.”

“You’re impossible,” she huffed, but there was warmth there. A pause. Then, more gently, “Talk to me.”

He hesitated. He wanted to tell her everything—how suffocated he felt, how each day was another weight pressing him down. But he knew her. Knew she’d yap on, filling the silence with words, trying to lighten the mood, trying to fix things she couldn’t fix.

Instead, he let out a breath and said, “I’m fine.”

Gloria scoffed. “Right. And I’m a world-class pianist. Ren, come on.”

He didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched, the only sound the faint static of the phone line and the wind outside. Then, finally, he whispered, “It just feels like I’m running out of time.”

Gloria didn’t respond immediately. For once, she didn’t fill the quiet with chatter. When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than before. “You’re not out of time, Ren. You just need a way out.”

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He closed his eyes. He wished she was right.

But wishing wouldn’t change anything, right?  

However, There was a time when Ren wasn’t just another nameless face behind a bar counter, when his life wasn’t dictated by the weight of unpaid bills and unfulfilled dreams. He used to be someone—carefree, reckless, rebellious. And most of all, he used to believe that the world would open up for him, that all he had to do was push forward, laugh in the face of adversity, and everything would eventually fall into place.  

Ironically, he was bound here now. Like an animal. 

He thought about that often—how the wild, restless boy who once skipped classes for no reason, who challenged teachers just for the hell of it, was now a prisoner to the routine of survival. How the same world he mocked had swallowed him whole.  

But there were still memories. Moments that felt like they belonged to another life.  

Ren had never been the type to care about school events, much less something as structured as a singing competition. He only signed up because his friends dared him to—half-joking, half-expecting him to make a fool of himself on stage. He hadn’t even prepared, walking into the audition with nothing but reckless confidence and a smirk.  

It was in that same competition that he first met Gloria.  

She wasn’t like the rest of them. While he treated the event like a joke, she stood in the center of the stage, her presence small yet powerful, like she belonged there. And when she sang—God, when she sang—it was like the entire hall stopped breathing. He didn’t know her name then. Didn’t even know she existed before that moment. But suddenly, he was aware.  

She was with her younger sister, Nora, a sharp-eyed girl who seemed far too amused by everything. They sat together after the first round, the air between them thick with awkward silence until Nora—blunt and unfiltered—turned to Ren and said, “So, what was that? A song or a tragic cry for help?”  

He raised an eyebrow, caught off guard. “Excuse me?”  

Gloria tried to suppress a laugh, nudging her sister. “Nora, be nice.” But there was amusement dancing in her eyes, too.  

It was then that Nora leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands, and asked, “What’s your name?”  

Ren hesitated before answering. “Ren Aguilar.”  

Gloria smirked. “Ren? Like Ren from Boys Over Flowers?”  

The entire hall erupted into laughter. He sat there, stone-faced, not understanding a damn thing while everyone else seemed to share some inside joke at his expense.  

That was the beginning.  

The beginning of her soft presence in his life, of the way she somehow stayed, even when so many others drifted away. While people dismissed him for being careless, arrogant, a troublemaker, Gloria saw something else. Something worth standing beside. She never hesitated to defend him, even when it cost her something—opportunities, friends, the approval of teachers who thought he was a waste of time.  

And he admired her for it.  

She was brilliant, effortlessly intelligent, the kind of person who could sit in a lecture hall and absorb knowledge like it was second nature. Yet, she never carried the arrogance of someone who knew they were smart. She was simple, in the way that made her impossible to ignore.  

And slowly, without meaning to, he fell for her.  

But she never looked at him that way.  

She was in love with someone else—Esteban. A name that left a bitter taste in Ren’s mouth even now. He had watched, silent and unseen, as she gave her heart to someone who never deserved it. She never admitted it out loud, never confessed, but he knew. He knew in the way her eyes softened when she spoke of him, in the way she listened so intently to his every word.  

And then, just as silently as it began, it ended.  

Esteban left. Or maybe he never really stayed. And in the aftermath, Ren watched Gloria break in ways he never thought possible.  

But something shifted after that.  

She pulled away—not just from him, but from everything. Their bond, once unshakable, began to fray at the edges. He fought to stay beside her, but she was slipping further, caught in the whirlwind of her own brilliance, her own rising star. While she moved toward the spotlight, he stayed in the shadows, watching her drift toward a life that had no place for him.  

And maybe that was always how it was supposed to be.  

Her family made that clear enough.  

The Aguilars had never been respectable. Their name carried weight, but for all the wrong reasons—whispers of shady dealings, favors exchanged in backrooms, money that never quite seemed clean. Gloria’s family despised him, even when he was just a boy sitting beside her at lunch, even when they were nothing more than friends. To them, he was a stain, a complication.  

And in some ways, his own family felt the same.  

His sister, the only person who had ever truly supported him, still looked at Gloria with veiled contempt. “You think she’ll stand by you?” she had once asked. “You think people like her ever stay?”  

Ren never answered.  

Because deep down, he had always known the truth.  

No matter how much he fought, no matter how much he cared, he and Gloria were never meant to stay in the same world.  

And now, here he was. A boy who once ran wild, now trapped behind a bar, solving a cube in secret.  

Somewhere out there, Gloria was still shining. And Ren?  

Ren was just trying to survive...in this animal planet, where he was a lamb in a world fill of predator. 

And, his only survival was the colourful cubical object in his hand... that was supposed to obey him.  

Ren turned it over in his hands, twisting instinctively. Right, down, left—wrong.  

He scowled. Again. Cross, F2L, OLL—error.

His hands froze, his breath shallow. He had solved this thing a thousand times, yet tonight, the colors refused to align. The patterns mocked him, slipping through his fingers like water.  

"Everything follows a formula, Ren." That’s what he told himself.  

It was a lie.  

Life wasn’t a cube. There was no perfect algorithm to fix what was broken. No elegant sequence of moves that could untangle the knots in his chest. No way to rewind time and make different choices.  

He scrambled it again. Faster this time. Desperate. Reckless. His fingers moved on instinct, but his thoughts scattered, untethered, dragging him back into places he didn’t want to go.  

"You’re not out of time, Ren. You just need a way out."

Gloria’s voice. A fleeting light in a collapsing tunnel.  

He had laughed when she said that. A bitter sound. She didn’t understand. Escape wasn’t an option when the walls were made of blood.

The attic door burst open. 

The cube slipped from his grip.

A fist crashed into his ribs. Ren barely had time to register the pain before he hit the wooden floor, breath knocked from his lungs.  

Laughter.  

Victor stood over him, flanked by two others—Theo and Jace.

Theo leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, his smirk lazy. “Damn, Ren. You’re even skinnier than last time. What do you eat up here? Dust?”  

Jace kicked at a loose floorboard. “I think he’s evolved past food. He just lives off self-pity now.”  

They laughed. Ren gritted his teeth, forcing himself up on one elbow.  

Victor sighed, shaking his head. “Still wasting your life on that toy?”  

Ren barely had time to respond before another blow struck his side. He gasped, pain flaring through his body. He tasted blood.  

Theo clicked his tongue. “He probably thinks he’s some kind of genius. What’s the point, man? You solving world hunger with that thing?”  

Jace crouched down, plucking up one of Ren’s crumpled papers. His competition notes. He skimmed it with exaggerated focus. “Oh, wow. Look at this. ‘Average solve time: 6.31 seconds.’ That’s crazy, man.” He paused, then grinned. “Too bad your life’s still a goddamn mess.”  

Ren said nothing. There was nothing to say.

Victor crouched, grabbing a fistful of Ren’s shirt and yanking him up just enough for their eyes to meet.  

“You don’t get it, do you? You’re embarrassing the family. Hiding in some bar, playing with that stupid cube, acting like you’re better than us.”  

Ren’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t better. He was just trying to be different.  

Victor’s gaze flicked to the cube lying a few feet away, where it had fallen.

A smirk- Dangerous. Cruel.

Then, suddenly, he snatched it up.

Ren’s stomach dropped.  

"Let me help you with that."  

Before he could react, Victor hurled the cube against the wall. 

It shattered. The pieces scattered across the attic floor, tumbling into the shadows.

Silence.  

Jace let out a low whistle. “Damn. Guess that’s one puzzle you won’t be solving.”  

Theo chuckled. “Don’t worry, Ren. Maybe if you stare at the pieces long enough, they’ll fix themselves. That’s what you do with your life, right?”  

Victor dusted off his hands like it was nothing. “Get your act together, Ren.”  

Then they were gone. The attic door slammed shut behind them.  

Ren lay there, staring at the ceiling. His last bit of control—gone, shattered like cheap plastic.

His fingers twitched toward the broken pieces, but he didn’t move.  

His chest ached—not just from the hits, but from something deeper.  

He was tired.  

So goddamn tired.