Chapter 3: THE NERVOUS ARCHITECT
I found Ted Mosby in the hallway outside my door, which was not where I expected to find Ted Mosby.
He was pacing. Not the casual pacing of someone waiting for an elevator. The manic pacing of a man whose entire understanding of romance was about to implode on impact with reality.
"You're Ethan." He stopped mid-step, pivoting toward me with the intensity of someone who had been rehearsing this conversation for twenty minutes. "Marshall said you're good at... people stuff. Reading people. He didn't explain it well, but Lily backed him up, which means something because Lily doesn't back things up unless she's sure."
"I just moved in yesterday."
"Right. Yes. But Marshall has a sense about people. He once met a guy at a gas station and knew immediately they'd be lifelong friends. They exchange Christmas cards now. Annual Christmas cards, Ethan. From a gas station stranger."
The string coming off Ted was... complicated.
That was the only word for it.
I'd seen clean strings. Marshall and Lily's was a masterwork of intertwined light, stable and certain. The couple at the coffee shop had solid, established connections. Even the widower's new thread had been simple—faint but clear.
Ted's strings were a tangle.
Multiple threads sprouted from his chest, leading in different directions. Most were faded, ghosts of past connections or futures that would never happen. But two stood out:
The first was bright red, knotted tight, leading toward someone nearby. Someone in this building or close to it. The system tagged it immediately:
[Active Connection: Robin Scherbatsky]
[Compatibility: 67%]
[Bond Type: Complicated]
[Status: First Meeting TODAY]
[Warning: This connection contains multiple timeline branches. Outcome uncertain.]
The second was gold.
Not gold like decoration. Gold like sunlight through stained glass. Gold like the first moment of morning after a long night. It stretched away from Ted into a distance I couldn't measure, so far I couldn't see where it ended.
[Tracy Protocol Active]
[Connection Analysis: RESTRICTED]
[Reason: Target timeline not yet aligned. Host lacks authorization level for premature revelation.]
[Note: This thread is classified as DESTINED PRIMARY. Do not interfere.]
"Are you okay?" Ted was staring at me. "You're doing the thing Marshall said you do. The staring thing."
"Sorry." I blinked, forcing the system analysis to the background. "Long day. What's the situation?"
Ted took a deep breath. Ran his hands through his hair. Started pacing again.
"I met a girl."
"Okay."
"At MacLaren's. An hour ago. Barney introduced us—Barney's our friend, you'll meet him, he's... a lot—and she's perfect, Ethan. She's perfect."
The red thread pulsed. Robin. He was talking about Robin.
"And the situation is..."
"I'm going to ask her out." He stopped pacing. Faced me directly. "Tonight. Right now. I'm going to go to her apartment and ask her on a date. But Marshall thinks I'm moving too fast, and Lily looked at me with that face she makes when she thinks I'm making a mistake but doesn't want to say it, and I just need someone who doesn't know me to tell me I'm not crazy."
I looked at the red thread connecting him to Robin. Looked at the gold thread stretching into an impossible future. Looked at the knots and tangles and the chaos of Ted Mosby's romantic fate laid out before me like a roadmap written in a language I was just learning to read.
"What do you know about her?"
"Robin." He said her name like other people said prayers. "She's a journalist. Metro News One. She's Canadian. She has five dogs, which is maybe a yellow flag but possibly also charming? She ordered a scotch neat, which is intimidating but also hot. And when Barney tried his magic trick on her, she told him to go away, but nicely. She told him nicely, Ethan."
"You've known her for an hour."
"An hour can be a lifetime! Romeo and Juliet fell in love in less time than that."
"Romeo and Juliet were teenagers who got six people killed."
Ted opened his mouth. Closed it. Tilted his head like he'd never considered that interpretation before.
"Huh."
"How old are you, Ted?"
"Twenty-seven."
"And how many times have you been in love?"
The question landed harder than I intended. Ted's face did something complicated—a flash of vulnerability underneath the manic energy, there and gone.
"Enough to know what it feels like." His voice was quieter now. "Enough to recognize it when it shows up."
The red thread pulsed again. Robin was thinking about him too. Whatever had happened at MacLaren's, it had left an impression on both of them.
But the thread was knotted. Twisted in ways that suggested complications I couldn't fully parse yet.
"Here's what I think," I said slowly. "I think you should ask her out. But I also think you should ask yourself a question first."
"What question?"
"Is she ready for what you're offering?"
Ted stared at me. The hallway was quiet except for the ambient noise of the building—water pipes, distant traffic, someone's television playing too loud a floor below.
"I don't know." The admission seemed to cost him something. "I just met her."
"Then maybe find out before you offer it."
He processed that for a long moment. Then he nodded, slowly, like I'd given him something to hold onto even if he wasn't sure what shape it was.
"You're weird," he said. "But like, good weird. Marshall was right about you."
"I'm just a neighbor."
"Yeah." He was already backing toward the stairs. "But a useful one. Thanks, Ethan. I'm gonna—I'm gonna think about what you said. While I ask her out. Which I'm definitely still doing."
"Good luck."
He grinned—the kind of grin that had probably gotten him out of trouble his entire life—and disappeared down the stairwell.
I stood in the hallway for a moment, watching the space where he'd been. The red thread trailed after him, leading down toward MacLaren's. Toward Robin. Toward something that would take years to untangle.
The gold thread stretched in the other direction. Patient. Waiting.
"Host, observation noted: You provided counsel without system-assisted intervention. Manual compatibility advice detected. EXP reward: +50 for successful emotional support."
[Current Status]
[Level: 2]
[EXP: 50/500]
[Fate Points: 95/100 (5 used on analysis)]
I went inside my apartment and closed the door.
The walls were thin. I'd noticed it yesterday, but now it was impossible to ignore. Through the shared wall, I could hear Marshall and Lily arguing about cheese. Not fighting—their string was too stable for that—but the kind of bickering that came from years of comfort.
"We don't need three types of cheddar, Marshall."
"But they're different sharpnesses! Sharp, extra sharp, and this one's aged! They have different purposes!"
"What purpose does extra sharp cheddar have that regular sharp doesn't?"
"Emotional! Emotional purposes, Lily!"
I put on headphones. I could still hear them.
[System Note: Host's residence has suboptimal sound insulation. Consider this a feature—proximity to active relationship dynamics may provide passive EXP opportunities.]
"Great," I muttered. "I'm going to level up by listening to my neighbors argue about cheese."
I spent the next two hours unpacking. Organizing the dead man's belongings into something resembling a living space. Hanging his clothes—my clothes now—in the closet. Setting up his computer, checking his email, finding nothing but spam and newsletter subscriptions.
Through the wall, the cheese argument ended. Reconciliation sounds followed. I turned the headphones up louder.
The business plan was on my laptop now, ninety percent complete. Red Thread Matchmaking. A boutique service for young professionals seeking genuine connection in an age of dating apps and superficial encounters.
I had eight thousand dollars, a dead man's marketing expertise, and the ability to literally see romantic fate.
It was either the best startup pitch in history or the most insane.
[Tutorial Quest Reminder: Make Your First Match]
[Note: Quest completion requires successful pairing of two compatible individuals. System will verify genuine mutual interest post-introduction.]
The system wanted me to practice. To prove I could do this before trying to build a business around it.
Fine.
Tomorrow, I'd find someone whose string led somewhere reachable. Someone whose love story was waiting to happen. Someone I could help without breaking the universe.
Tonight, I'd sleep in a dead man's bed and try not to think too hard about what my own string looked like. If I even had one. If it led anywhere at all.
Through the wall, silence finally fell in 4A.
Then, cutting through the quiet, Ted's voice—muffled but audible, carrying the specific energy of someone who'd just made a decision: "I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna ask her out! Tonight!"
Marshall's response was too quiet to hear. But Lily's groan carried clearly through the thin walls.
I checked my phone. 11:47 PM.
Ted was about to say "I love you" on a first date. Robin was about to panic. The blue French horn was about to become a symbol.
And I was going to lie here, listening to it all happen, knowing exactly how the next nine years would unfold for people I'd met less than forty-eight hours ago.
"Host appears distressed. Reminder: Tracy Protocol exists to protect timeline integrity. Your inability to prevent known outcomes is a feature, not a failure."
"That's not comforting."
"It was not intended to be."
I closed my eyes.
The strings would still be there in the morning. The system would still want its first match. The dead man's business plan would still need executing.
But right now, in this moment, I was just a guy in a new apartment, listening to his neighbors live their lives through walls too thin to keep secrets.
Tomorrow, I'd start changing things.
My phone buzzed. Unknown number again.
"Ethan! It's Ted. I just got kicked out of her apartment. I said 'I love you.' ON THE FIRST DATE. Why didn't you stop me?!"
I stared at the screen for a long moment.
Then I typed back: "I told you to find out if she was ready."
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
"...okay fair point. But now what do I do?"
Through the wall, I heard his footsteps returning to 4A. Heard Marshall's voice—supportive, steady, confused. Heard Lily's sigh, heavy with the weight of a friendship that had clearly involved a lot of these moments.
I thought about the red thread, knotted and complicated. About the gold thread, patient and waiting. About a twenty-seven-year-old architect who'd just learned that sometimes the universe doesn't give you what you want when you want it.
"Now," I typed, "you figure out how to prove you meant it without saying it again."
His response came thirty seconds later: "That's... actually good advice. You're definitely weird. But useful."
I set the phone down.
The ceiling fan turned slowly above me, casting shadows that moved like strings in the dim light.
Somewhere in this city, Robin Scherbatsky was looking at a blue French horn and wondering what the hell had just happened. In a few hours, Ted would steal that horn from a restaurant and prove that his grand gestures were as insane as they were genuine.
And in nine years, he'd meet a woman with a yellow umbrella at a train station in Farhampton, and everything would finally make sense.
I just had to survive until then without breaking the timeline.
No pressure.
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