I open messages from promoters.
One ghosted me two weeks ago.
One says they’d “love to reconnect in the future.”
One says current market conditions no longer support live-risk bookings for my genre, which is a very elegant way of saying nobody wants to insure me onstage anymore.
“Traitors,” I mutter.
I pull up contacts and start making calls.
Renn doesn’t answer.
Julo answers, hears my voice, and says, “No.”
“I didn’t ask yet.”
“You were about to.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“I need a bridge loan.”
“You need exorcism.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. You still owe me from the Serkai residency.”
“That was an accounting misunderstanding.”
“That was theft with cheekbones.”
“Julo—”
“No.” He hangs up.
I stare at the comm. “Rude.”
Next call. Voicemail.
Next call. Declined.
Next call. A former manager who answers just long enough to say, “Bron, if this is money, I have none, and if it’s an apology, I’m busy,” then disconnects.
By the fifth refusal, my apartment feels smaller. Airless. The city noise outside presses against the windows—traffic hum, distant sirens, a fruit vendor somewhere in the street below shouting the virtues of spiced rind melon like civilization depends on produce.
I scrub both hands over my face.
All right.
Inventory.
I can sell the holo-projector. Maybe the soundboard. Definitely the gold wrist cuffs I bought because a reviewer once described me as “dangerously ornamental” and I made it my personality for six months. The problem is that even stripped clean, this place isn’t worth enough to buy back my life.
I look around anyway.
