He woke on the floor.
The chair had finally rejected him, or maybe he'd just slid off it at some point during the night. His back screamed. His mouth tasted like something had died in it. The empty Black Ram bottle lay beside him, the ram's red eyes staring at nothing.
The monitor showed 6:17 AM. He'd slept maybe three hours.
Leo lay on the floor for a long time, staring at the ceiling. The paint was peeling. There was a water stain in the corner that looked like a map of a country that didn't exist. The dryers below had not yet started it was too early and the silence was strange and almost peaceful.
He thought about getting up. He thought about making coffee on the hot plate. He thought about opening his laptop and checking his AdSense earnings, which would be maybe $0.30, and his Shopify store, which had been dormant for months, and his YouTube channel, which he hadn't touched in two years.
Then he thought about not doing any of those things.
The thought was terrifying. The computer was the only thing he knew. It was his identity, his purpose, his reason for getting out of the mattress every morning. Without it, he was just a man in a room. Just a failure with a drinking problem and a father who didn't respect him.
But he was already that. The computer had just given him something to do while he was being it.
He sat up slowly. His head pounded. His hand trembled. He looked at the computer the glowing, humming altar of his life and something shifted inside him.
Not hope. He'd learned to distrust hope. But something else. Something smaller and harder. A recognition that he couldn't keep doing this. That the definition of insanity was trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That the computer had been his method, his plan, his salvation, and it had failed him completely.
He needed to get away. Not just from the computer from everything. From the room, from the city, from the endless pressure to perform and produce and prove himself. From the voice of his father that lived inside his head like a parasite.
He remembered a place. A forest in northern Scotland, near the Cairngorms. He'd seen photos online years ago endless pines, mist curling through the valleys, silence so deep you could hear your own heartbeat. He'd bookmarked it once, dreaming of escape, and then forgotten about it in the noise of daily survival.
He pulled out his phone. Checked his bank account: £214. Enough for a train ticket and basic supplies. He'd sleep in the woods. He'd bring a tent he didn't own yet, but he could buy one. He'd done survival training as a teenager a brief, misguided attempt to please his father, who believed that real men could start fires with sticks. Leo had hated every moment of it, but the knowledge had stayed.
He made a decision. Three days. No computer. No phone signal. No people. Just trees and sky and the sound of his own breathing.
He showered, packed a backpack, and left the room without looking back.