A Soft Place to land

19

After a moment, the door opened up once again, and Mrs. Im appeared to have not only picked up his mail on the way to the door- but also her baby girl who stared at Gray with wide, curious eyes from over her mother's shoulder.

Gray's never actually seen her before, despite his countless visits to the family home. And so, upon seeing her for the first time, he naturally found himself staring back at her. Unlike her mother, she had dark red hair that shone under the morning sun- felt familiar, but Gray didn't question it.

"There ya go!" Mrs. Im extended her arm to hand Gray a plastic bag, supposedly filled with all of Gray's documents and such. And, as he reached out to grab it, he had a fleeting thought at the back of his mind that worried him.

'What if she looked through them.' Probably not,, but the fact that there was a chance, scared Gray to the bone.

So much so that he practically yanked it away from her, hands trembling without realizing. The friendly atmosphere became suffocating between them as Mrs. Im casted him a worried gaze. But he couldn't find it in himself to apologize, he couldn't help but keep his eyes down, just in case she did look through his mail. He didn't want to see her pity him.

"Gray? Are you okay?" She asked

"Huh? Oh- uh yeah, i'm fine.." Gray said, clutching the bag at his side. "Well, I'll take my leave now, goodbye Mrs. Im." Not wanting to stay there any longer, he immediately turned his back to her and began to make his way back to the taxi parked by the curbside.

"Alright,, be safe out there!" He heard her yell from behind him, but he didn't look back and just shut the taxi door, shutting himself away.

Inside the taxi, Gray took heavy breaths and had to sit back and relax for a second. That was probably extremely rude of him, to just straight up ignore her like that. But he couldn't help it, he was scared- embarrassed even, just because there was a slight chance that she knew and pitied him for living the way he does. He didn't want to see that look on her face, not on someone he respected. So to solve that problem, at least temporarily, he just chose not to look.

When he got back home, he dropped the plastic bag by the bathroom door and fell onto his mattress with a barely audible "thud". With the events of earlier replaying in his mind, Gray sighed into his pillow. He had a thought; maybe it'd just be easier to disappear for awhile, to just dissolve into nothingness so he wouldn't have to worry about such trivial things. He tried. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, attempting to clear his mind.

Of course it didn't work.. He's done this countless times before, yet he still somehow thought that if he tried hard enough reality would give in. It really didn't help that his ceiling wasn't very pleasant to look at either, there were some questionable stains splattered across it, and if he squinted hard enough he could see some left over insect smudge and residue from the summer. It wasn't pretty.

An hour later, Gray finally concluded that dissolving into thin air simply wasn't possible and forced himself to get up. On his way to the bathroom, he accidentally kicked the plastic bag over, spilling its contents onto his hallway floor. Orange files slid out of the bag like drawers of a file cabinet, and a bundle of papers held together by a rubber band rolled out of the bag and under the hallway table.

Right, mail.

Gray sighed, and bent down to pick them up. He straightened out the files, stacked them into a neat pile on his wooden side-table, and continued to dump everything else in the bag onto the table as well.

There were loose document papers, more files, and letters- Five letters to be exact, all a pristine white, with the handwriting 'From Dad' sprawled across the envelopes. Upon seeing them scattered across his table, Gray stared at them for a moment.

'From Dad'

To add to the already unbelievable stack of legal documents and debt he had, seeing that more letters from his dad were continuing to flood his bathroom trash stressed him out. He thought that years of not responding would discourage his old man from writing to him, but the amount of letters had only increased year after year.