The next morning, the phone rang again. Not Lily this time. Unknown number. He let it ring, let it ring. He knew. It's them. The end. The final cut. He glared at the screen until it died. Then, a text message. From Marius. "Xing, your services are no longer required. Your final pay will be processed next week. Good luck."
Last check. Next week. Not today. No check. Nothing. Just… gone.
He lay in his bed for hours. Sunlight crept across the room, forming stripes on the wall, and then fading. He felt nothing. Just a great, empty chasm. He didn't eat. He didn't drink. An empty shell. That's all that's left.
Days blended. The pink planner never opened. The poppy in the book, a dry crinkled husk. He drifted, a ghost in his own apartment, the silence broken only by the muffled sounds of his mother moving about, her soft questions on the other side of the door. He didn't speak much.
He stumbled into the bathroom one night. The mirror reflected a stranger. Gaunt cheeks, dark shadowed eyes. He stepped onto the scales. The numbers flickered. 65 kg. He stared. Two weeks before. 66. Two weeks. One kilo. Gone. Like everything. Fading.
The reflection of his own thin face in the mirror was the spark. Not hope, no. But the slightest flicker of alarm. This. This isn't the plan. Not the escape. Not the best. This is… slow decay. Ineffective.
He thought of his mother. Her worried eyes, her soft "How are you, son?" Her steadfast presence. And his father, remote but with the undertones of expectation, the contained pride he occasionally glimpsed. They… they would grieve. So pathetic. If I… just… disappeared. Like a ghost. A Nastrophy. Consumed. By nothing.
It was a freezing cold splash, a shock. It was not for him anymore. Not just him. It was for them. The ones who still loved. Even if he couldn't feel it, couldn't understand why.
He got dressed. The baggy hoodie looked even larger, hanging off his body. He came out of his room, into the living room. His mother looked up, caught off guard.
"Xing? You're out of your room!" She spoke in a tone of relief and concern.
He jerked his head in a nod. He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water, and took his pills. For the first time today, he forced himself to eat a piece of toast. It was bitter, like ash.
He ended up at the park bench, the very same one he sat upon as a child, watching the world go by. There was a chill in the air, and a gentle wind rustling the leaves. He looked at his phone to see the job search apps. He hadn't accessed them in days. Weeks.
He started to talk, not to anyone, but to the apathetic air, to the swishing leaves, to the distant buzzing of traffic. His voice was rough and disjointed.
"Fired. Yes. No pay. This… this is it. The bottom. Right? The very… end. No… no more. Call center. No more. Marius. No more. Lily. Gone. All gone. Like… dust. In the wind. Just… me. And… this. This… emptiness. But… Mama. Papa. They… they would… cry. Right? Sad. So sad. And… I can't. I can't make them. Sad. Not… like that. Not… my choice. Their pain. No. Not that. So… what? What now? A job. Another one. Just… another cage. But… a cage. For them. Not for me. For them. Yes. For them. I'll… try. Again. Find. Something. Anything. Just… to make them. Not sad. Not… like that. The monster. Inside. It whispers. Useless. Worthless. Just… end it. But… their faces. Their tears. No. Not yet. Not… like this. So… jobs. Yes. Jobs. Applications. The endless. Scroll. The endless. Lie. But… I'll try. For them. Just… for them. The hope. It's a curse. But… maybe. Just maybe. A tiny. Flicker. For them."
He remained sitting for what felt like hours, the words echoing through the desolate, empty space of his mind. Then, with tortured slowness, he went on and opened an employment search app. The screen was a harsh, unyielding light. He scrolled. He saw nothing. But he kept scrolling. For his father. For his mother. For the small, tenuous hope that, somewhere, there was still something worth continuing.
The succeeding days were a snail's pace, crawling and agonizing. Xing lived through them like a specter, his body with him, his mind an echo far away. He ate sparingly when his mother pressed him to do so, the food as stale as cardboard. He slept intermittently, his dreams a jumbled mixture of fantasy and the biting, crystalline reality. Suna fought Nastrophies over desolate wastelands, while Xing looked at help-wanted notices, each one a new wound.
The emptiness. It calls. More urgently now. No purpose. No purpose. Just… this. This… drifting. Like a leaf. On a stagnant brook. Gone nowhere. Fast.
He would sit for an hour, sometimes on the park bench, sometimes simply in his room, staring at the ceiling. The note to Lily, torn, rested on his desk, a reminder of a broken connection. The poppy, delicate, a reminder of a moment of fleeting interest.
Worthless. That's the word. The one. That defines. Me. Now. Always. Was it always? Yes. Always. Just… hidden. Under layers. Of… pretense. Of… trying. Now. Exposed. Raw. Ugly. Like a wound. That won't heal.
He remembered his childhood. Not with fondness, but with a detached, clinical gaze. A quiet boy. Always in his head. Drawing. Writing. Escaping. Into stories. Into worlds. He built them. Brick by brick. To hide from… what?
The whispers. From childhood. Not enough. Never enough. You're not like. The others. The bright ones. The loud ones. The ones who… succeed. You… you're just… a shadow. A failure. Waiting. To happen.
His parents. They labored. Hard. Always. For him. For a better future. He saw it in their tired eyes. The unstated burden. The ambitions they had placed upon him. And he felt it. A burden so overwhelming.
Their aspirations. Not mine. Never mine. But I must. Must try. To be. What they wanted. A good son. A successful man. And I fail. Always. Fail. A phantom. Of expectation. Tormenting me.
The fantasy world, his game, had been spawned from this. From the desperate quiet of a child who felt lost in a chaotic, demanding world. Where he could not measure up to the unspoken expectations. Where he could not be "enough."
The Arcons. The gods. Of my world. My childhood deities. Created. To care for me. Power. Control. Over something. When I had none. In this. This world.
The battles. Suna's battles. Against the Nastrophies. The creatures. They were my creatures. My nightmares. My fears. Given form. To battle. To conquer. In a world. Where I could. Succeed. Unlike here.
The Tree of Worlds. The endless chances. Of escape. Of existence. Another. Elsewhere. Where the pressure. The fear. The failure. Could not reach.
He felt a deep, burning sorrow. Not for himself, but for that child. The child who had built a world in which to be. The child who was now, as an adult, still trapped within it.
It is not a game. It is… a fortress. Built of hopes. And fear. Mostly fear. The fear of… not being worth it. The fear of… failing. Yet again. And again. Until there is nothing left. To fail.
He knew, cold with certainty, that the fantasy world was symptomatic. Beautiful, complex symptom of a deeper pain. His unhappy childhood. The pervasive, devouring fear of failure. These were the roots. The bitter earth from which his great escapes had sprung.
And now. The fortress. It's collapsing. The walls. Are weakening. The monsters. They're breaking in. From both sides. The real. And the… other.
He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, following the cracks. Each of them a line, a path. To nowhere. Or somewhere. He wasn't sure. The image of his parents, their expressions contorted in disappointment, was a dull ache in his chest. They deserve. More. Than this. Than me. Than… a ghost.
He reached for his phone again. The job search applications. He opened one. The endless scroll. The endless lie. But this time, there was a difference. The old pain in his chest remained, but beneath it a tiny, almost imperceptible quiver. Not hope, not yet. But a glimmer of determination. A raw, desperate desire to just not hurt them.
For them. Only them. One more attempt. One more struggle. In this. This. actual world. Even if it's. A battle that can't be won. I have to. For them.
He started typing. His fingers, hesitant and fumbling at first, developing a rhythm. He filled in an application. Then another. And another. Each click, each entry, a tiny, heartbreaking step in the right direction. Not for himself. Not for a future he did not believe in anymore. But for the faces that would be sad. For the tears he could not bring himself to cry. For the tender, unspoken promise that he had made to them, long ago, in a boyhood that he barely remembered. The monster still growled, but at the moment the echo of his parents' grief was more clear. Just. For. Now.
Weeks dissolved into months, a mind-numbing cycle of waking, being, and the endless, oftentimes hopeless, search. Each rejection letter was a tiny, sharp nip, reminding the monster inside that which it already roared. See? I told you. Useless. Always. He had applied for everything. Call centers, data entry, even nights sweeping. No response. Or the friendly, boilerplate "we've decided to go with other candidates."
His mother, God bless her, did make the effort. She'd sit with him, take him tea, little snacks, sit in silence in the living room, watching him out of the corner of one eye. She never questioned him outright about the job, but her silence, her quiet sitting, was enough. He could see the worry lines etched on her face, the subtle slump of her shoulders. My fault. All my fault. Another failure. Another burden.
He'd force himself to eat, to shower, to pretend. Pretending was exhausting. The weight still lost, but more slowly now. He stopped weighing himself. What for? Just numbers. More proof. Of. disappearing.
There was one afternoon when a very vicious wave of hopelessness overwhelmed him. He sat on the park bench, the same one. The sun was warm, but he was cold, appallingly numb. He pulled out the crumpled letter to Lily and flattened it. The words, his words, stared back at him. Worst book ever written. Solid two hours of garbage. He pondered the final exit. The roof of the hotel. The stinking drowning out blood. The drugs. They were still in the room. A quiet, always accessible option.
This. This is it. The moment. The decision. The gift. Of God. To die. To end. The pain. The futility. The… burden.
He closed his eyes. He pictured the empty cubicle in the call center. Marius's disappointed face. Lily's faraway voice. The endless, meaningless calls. The constant, gnawing fear of failure. It all congealed into a suffocating darkness.
And then another photograph. His mother's face. Not worried, but smiling. From memory, blurry and distant. Her hand, small and warm, in his. His father, a sporadic, proud nod after he'd shown him a drawing, a story he'd written as a child. The moments of connection, the love. Unconditional. Even for him.
They. they would break. Shatter. If I. if I made the decision. The gift. My choice. Their pain. No. Not that. Not. that legacy.
He opened his eyes. The world still spun. The sun still shone. The trees still whispered. He was still here. Why? For them. Only for them. This. hyper-hope. A curse. A torture. But. for them. I will ache. I will. attempt.
He pulled out his phone. The job search app. He scrolled past the call center positions, the data entry. He paused on something else. A small independent bookstore. "Part-time assistant." Not much. Probably minimum wage. But it wasn't a call center. It wasn't the same cage.
A book. A story. Not my story. Not a terrible book. But… books. Words. Maybe. Maybe just maybe. A different sort of cage. Or… a window. A small crack. In the fortress.
He clicked. The form was long. A chore. He could sense the familiar resistance, the monster whispering. Useless. Time waste. You'll lose. Again. But he kept typing. His fingers, still clumsy, found a new rhythm. Slow. More deliberate. Word by word, a tiny act of defiance against the void.
He recalled Suna, fighting the Nastrophies. My monsters. My fears. Personified. He fought them now. Not with obsidian blades, but with words on a screen. A different form of combat. A less loud one. But no less vital.
The Tree of Worlds. Countless paths. I walked this one. For them. The path of… persistence. Of… not surrendering. Even when. All. Screams. To.
He finished the application. Hit submit. A small, almost imperceptible tremor ran through him. Not hope. Not yet. But a sense of having done something. A tiny, fragile step.
He looked at the sky. A few clouds drifted lazily. The sun was setting, painting the horizon in hues of orange and purple. Another day. Done. Another battle. Fought. And… I'm still here. For now. For them.
He went home, the air colder now, the city noises fading into darkness. His mother would wait. He would eat. He would sleep. And tomorrow, he would rise. And he would attempt again. For them. For them alone. The monster would still whisper, but for now, the echo of his parents' love, and the desperate, animalistic urge to protect them from his own anguish, was louder. Just. For. Now. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.