- Or live a lot.

  - Just have fun, man. You don’t know when things get serious again.

  - You’ll never regret a laugh, unless you snort and choke in front of your crush.

  - And if you do, own it.

  ---

  Building a wall sounds serious. And it was… for about twenty minutes.

  We were knee-deep in sweat, cement dust, and the occasional zombie bone someone buried like a twisted time capsule. The plan was to fortify the outer edge of our newly claimed bandit base. And by "fortify," I mean stack up a mix of cinder blocks, salvaged concrete slabs, metal scraps, and Jules' absolutely terrifying insistence on structural symmetry.

  “Angle this one five degrees left,” she said, nudging a block with her boot.

  I tilted my head. “That’s five degrees?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “Well, it’s either five degrees or I’m thinking of waffles.”

  “...Same thing.”

  We worked in silence for a bit, our breathing syncing up with the sounds of thudding stone, Alex’s distant drilling, and Gail barking at a blueprint like it insulted his mother.

  Then, to kill the time, I muttered, “Alright. Word chain. Let’s go. I’ll start: Fortress.”

  Jules blinked at me. “Seriously?”

  “Yup. Next word starts with S.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Stamina.”

  I grinned. “Apocalypse.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Eccentric.”

  “You calling me eccentric?”

  “If the boot fits.”

  We kept going. Cabbage. Elephant. Torch. Helmet. Some words were nonsense. Some turned into light roasts. At one point, I hit her with Tattletale and she nearly threw a brick at me.

  Then Alex showed up, covered in dust and pride, and asked, “Are we playing dumb games without me?”

  “Always,” I said. “Join in. Elbow.”

  Alex cracked her knuckles. “Waffles.”

  “You were thinking about waffles too!?” Jules gasped.

  Alex shrugged. “I’m always thinking about waffles.”

  Eventually, Gail wandered over with a long plank of wood slung over his shoulder and a look that said ‘I tolerate you people because you’re useful.’

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Word chains,” I explained. “Come on. We’re trying to outlast each other’s vocabulary and mental health.”

  He stared at us for a second. Then, with the voice of a man who’d once whispered war plans over whiskey, he said, “Salamander.”

  We all paused.

  “Okay,” I muttered. “He’s playing to win.”

  Four sweaty idiots, covered in grime and grit, building a wall in the middle of a ruined city, trading words like kids in the backseat of a car.

  And yeah, it didn’t make the wall any stronger. But it made the day better.

  We argued about whether Yogurt counts as a “real word” and if Tarantula could be used twice in a single day (it cannot). We teased Gail for dropping Righteousness and ending the chain because Alex refused to follow up with another S-word for the fifth time in a row. We laughed. A lot.

  By sundown, the wall was taller. Stronger.

  And so were we.