Start the song. It's Travelling Alone by Passenger.

Josh was returned to his cell in the solitary block the next day. There was a stack of letters sitting on his bed to greet him, and none of his stuff seemed to have been stolen or messed with in his absence. He sighed gratefully as he was uncuffed and allowed to go sit on his bed. The officer in charge of the block at the moment wasn't one Josh interacted with much, but he didn't suck. There would be a shift change in a few hours though, so Josh tried not to get his hopes up.

He looked around at the familiar cinderblock walls surrounding him. He'd personalised his cell just slightly over the years. Polaroids and drawings from his family were taped up on the walls, books filled the shelf at the top of his desk, and all of the nonsense religious paraphernalia his mother sent him had its own shelf. There was a Bible, a rosary, prayer candles Josh couldn't light, and a statue of a saint he honestly couldn't even remember the name of all tucked into that shelf. He didn't know why he kept any of it. Maybe it was just because he missed his mom. Maybe it was because he still found himself praying the rosary whenever that awful poisonous guilt started to surface within him, simply out of habit.

Josh changed back into his regular orange jumpsuit, setting his suicide watch clothes aside to be collected by the next guard on duty before picking up his rosary and sitting down on this bed. He let the beads slide through his hands, but didn't pray. He thought about Frangipane and how she might be doing right now. Would she be done with her procedure by now? Was she in recovery? Would her husband hurt her if he found out what she'd had to do? Would he even care?

With a sigh, Josh set the rosary aside and picked up the menacing pile of letters sitting beside him. They all bore proof of having been opened previously by guards, but that was nothing new. He picked up the top one on the stack, sliding out the few pages of lined notebook paper tucked inside. A brief scan of the words let him know that this was from someone who wished he would've died in the fire. Her name was Leslie, and she was from Indiana. She called him a murderer six times. He tucked the letter into the box beneath his bed before continuing to make his way through the stack.

Unsurprisingly, seeing as it was the day after the anniversary, the majority of the letters were either death threats, teenage copycats looking for validation, or pictures of the charred bodies that had been discovered after the fire. Josh picked up his rosary again, dropping his head back against the wall and closing his eyes as he ran through the familiar prayers in a whisper. There was only one letter left after he muttered his final "amen."

This letter was just written on lined notebook paper too. It was addressed to "Josh Dun" instead of Joshua Dun, which Josh surprisingly had never seen anyone else apart from his family write. The friendly nature of the opening to the letter, a simple "Hi Josh!" intrigued him, causing him to set his rosary down and read the first paragraph carefully.

Hi Josh! I know you don't know me, so maybe it's weird for me to write to you, but there were just some things I've wanted to say to you for the past few days. I should say up front that I'm not expecting you to write back, and there's no pressure for you to do that. I know you probably want to save your time and energy for communicating with your family and working through whatever you need to in there, and I completely respect that. There are just a few things I feel like I really need to tell you if you have time to read them.

Josh stared at the page in front of him in surprise. No one wrote him un-intimidating letters without expecting a response. There was always the hope that he'd write them back, play into their weird little fantasy, and allow them to feel important. He'd never had someone write just for him. Even members of his family didn't really do that. He couldn't help but keep reading.

First off, I want to specify that I know that what you did was wrong, but I also believe that you know that too. No one would go against an attorney's counsel and plead guilty if they didn't know they'd made a mistake, and I respect you a lot for accepting the full consequences for your actions. I think that had to take guts, especially coming from a kid. I hope you're really proud of that moment. Regardless of the punishment that followed, I think you should know just how rare and incredibly courageous your decision was.

Courageous? Josh's family had all told him it was a stupid thing to do. His lawyer had yelled at him after that court session, telling him he was an idiot for throwing away his future like that. Josh smiled a little bit as he read though. Someone was proud of him. Someone understood why he'd made that decision.

Second, and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard before, but you do show textbook signs of childhood pyromania. I'm not pointing this out to cast judgment or to try and shame you for it. It isn't your fault, and it's hardly anything to be ashamed of in general. I'm only bringing this up because I really hope you're getting some sort of treatment or at least some solid support in there that can help you get to a stable mindset before you're released in June. I think it'll be easier for you to readjust to life on the outside if you have the proper coping skills to manage the changes you're going to face.

It wasn't news to Josh in any sense that he had experienced periods of pyromania as a child. That was pretty obvious, but it was rarely spoken about in a kind and nonjudgmental way. He was used to people either being terrified or uncomfortably fascinated with that. This stranger just...understood. They just wanted him to get better, and they believed he would get out in June. Who was this person?

Third, I understand what it's like to come from a complicated family background and to feel ashamed of the past. I have a long history of putting myself in situations where I feel like I'm either letting people down or forgetting to prioritize their needs ahead of my own. It's a shitty feeling, but it's not unique. I think everyone in the whole world has done things they wish they could take back or redo.

The rosary was back in Josh's hand as he read the words on the paper in front of him, unable to help but notice that the writing got a little sloppier when the writer talked about personal things. They had put actual emotion into this letter, and it wasn't even fully directed at Josh. They were just...talking to him...like he was a person, a friend.

Anyway, I'm sorry if me sending this letter crossed your boundaries or came across as intrusive. I have a lot of respect for you, and I don't want to make your life more stressful than I'm sure it already is at the moment. I just wanted to let you know that there's hope for you when you get out in June, and that there's at least one person out here who believes you deserve a second chance after all of this.

On the off chance that you do decide you want to respond to this letter, I don't want you to feel pressured to take on any of my issues or to only talk about the heavy shit I've mentioned above. I'm sure you're tired of only talking about your tragic backstory. (I can relate.) If you do respond, feel free to just tell me about your day or your favorite color or to even just draw a bunch of dicks on a piece of paper and tell me to fuck off. It's totally up to you. I hope you're safe, comfortable, and well. -TJ

Josh was smiling properly now, rereading the letter a couple times to let it fully sink in. He laughed every time he read the suggestion that he just draw dicks on a piece of paper and tell this kind stranger to fuck off.

"Challenge accepted," he decided, climbing off of his bed and going straight to his desk, where he wrote what he considered to be a very thoughtful response.

He answered TJ's questions, followed the little writing prompts in the last paragraph, and spent the next thirty minutes very carefully creating a border around the letter made entirely of diverse cartoon phalluses. He signed the note, "Go fuck yourself. -Josh." Upon further the deliberation, he took the time to turn the dots above all of his i's into tiny penises as well.

He then slipped the letter into an envelope from his desk, copied TJ's P.O. Box information onto the envelope, and set it aside. When the guard left at the end of his shift, Josh gave him the letter to drop into the mail. Although TJ's had a stamp on the front stating that it had been expedited to reach Josh sooner, Josh would have to settle for allowing the letter to reach the nice stranger in at least a week.

It wasn't until Josh sat back down on his bed that he realized he'd written that stranger back more quickly than he'd ever written anyone in his family. He still hadn't even responded to his little sister, yet he'd just written back to a complete stranger without hesitation. Even more surprisingly, he didn't feel guilty about it. He just kind of hoped the stranger would write him back.