“Now where did he go?” Nava thought as she looked around to see if the supply thief was anywhere near. “I spent a week collecting that stuff from old grocery stores.” The forest was quite thick to search through, but she hesitated on leaving and continued to walk deeper anyway.

While walking she heard a familiar murmur. Even though some supply thief was on the run, she decided to investigate. From behind a bush, she saw a dark haired boy arguing to himself, pacing back and forth until it appears that his glasses were about to fall. “Carson looks much worse than usual”, thought the girl. “I wonder what’s got under his skin this time.”

Nava kept watching in the bushes, unwilling to interfere until she thought it was enough. She leapt from the bushes and greeted the distraught boy. His words were cut off as his face turned to white in a flash, followed by a shriek.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Carson, I-”

“Were you stalking me again?”

“What? No, I just-”

“I already told you many times not to-”

“Can you just let me finish?” She snapped, stomping her foot to the ground. “Oh my goodness, sometimes it’s infuriating to talk to you!”

There was a brief pause. “Once again, what do you want from me?” Carson asked. Nava proceeded to condescendingly explain how she got here and why she approached him. “...and since I am a decent human being, I was concerned. So, what’s the matter?”

Carson scowled at her. “I don’t want to talk about it”, he said, turning away from her. Nava rolled her eyes, “Says the one who has been grumbling at nothing for the past 5 minutes.” Carson sighed. Nava was always good at countering excuses, and at this point he didn’t have the energy to quarrel with her. “Fine, here goes,” he huffed.

“I am just sick of my teammates! Alex is being selfish and lazy, Maya doesn’t care about anything, Adam and Lucy betrayed us to the insufferable Team Orion, and now, Castalea is missing! My main problem is Maya and Alex. They are simply the worst; they keep pushing me to do all the work while they sit back and laze around! ‘Carson, get us food.’ ‘Carson, find us the last paper scrap for this level, will you?’ ‘Carson, scratch my back even though I can do basic motor functions.’ I do all these things and what do I get? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Carson paused for a moment to think about another subject. And the entire time he was talking Nava was sitting on the ground, listening to what has been bugging him this entire time. It’s true that she got what she wanted, the reason why he’s unhappy, but at this point it was just him rambling. He opened his mouth to start complaining again.

“I can’t believe Adam and Lucy would ditch us and hang out with those people. I-”

“Okay I’ve heard enough. It seems like you’re overthinking and overreacting to this stuff. These are simple problems that can be solved if you actually do something. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Ugh, no, you don’t understand! This is why I didn’t want to tell you. Nobody understands the situation I’m in!” Carson shouted at the top of his lungs. Nava was confused and she groaned at his statement. “Look, I perfectly understand the situation you’re in, your lazy friends treat you unfairly and there’s nobody left to help you. The thing is that you do something to change that.”

“But I don’t know how! That’s just who I am, I know the problems yet I don’t know how to fix them!”

“Listen. You have a lot of simple options to choose from. You can stand up for yourself against your ‘friends’. You can search for your missing teammates. You can do a lot of things to distract yourself from those problems, rather than cultivating them and letting them grow.”

“...I never thought of that”, said Carson. Another pause broke out. Then it clicked with him. He had a lot of options and he chose not to find the solution. He had to fix this. And a scowl slowly turned into a slight smile. “Thanks for the advice, Nava. Sorry that I’ve been so... irritable.”

Nava grinned.  “Don’t mention it. At least you’re not so miserable anymore.”

“Hey!”

“Haha, sorry. Anyway, I have to get going. I need to get my supplies back.”

“Okay, good luck then.”

“Thanks.”