Giving all those IOUs even in a desperate moment, as anyone sane would've warned him, was not a good idea.

He'd been prepared to owe a day of heavy manual labor or maybe a lift to somewhere far enough to run him a week's worth of his fuel budget, but somehow he hadn't imagined being roped into filling in as a plug.

On the plus side, his curiosity about the mushrooms left in Shiro's his shack is resolved when he sees the similar-looking fruits in one of the gallon bags his neighbor pushes on to him.

"You owe me fifteen hundred after it all sells, and you can keep anything on top of that," his neighbor offers. "And don't think I won't know where to find you if you try to run off on me."

He'd walked Keith through the going rates for the items in each of the bags and sent him on his way.

It wasn't long before his greed got the better of him. If he only needed to hold onto fifteen hundred dollars, he was holding an extra two thousand dollars in his bag right now at the suggested going rates.

If he kept it up, that was enough to ensure the bike would never be out of commission for long again, enough for three meals a day every day, more than he could conceivably think to ever spend.

Within a month, his original haul was gone and he no longer had to seek out potential customers. They came to him.

It was an easy decision to return to his neighbor and ask for more.

It's a harder decision to set it all aside to sell this time… so he doesn't.

He's in the green, he's no longer doing this by force as a return on an IOU, and to be honest… he's tired. Tired of the drag of the lonely days inching by, tired of the way panic grips him seemingly at random throughout each day, tired of trading his time and wear on Shiro's bike for unlivable wages delivering mediocre food to ungrateful customers, tired of thinking about what he's lost and what little he has to look forward to.

What he has now helps chase it all away when it gets to be too much. It makes life… livable. For a bit, at least.

It won't be for long. He can quit whenever he wants. That's just not today.