Apartment Blues

Prologue

   The black-haired man pushed on his desk and propelled himself backward on his office chair. He looked at his laptop and threw his hands behind his head in frustration. He'd been rejected from another office job today.

   He really needed a job, a high-paying job. A job that would sustain him so that he didn't need to work a bunch of really crappy ones, a job that would allow him to buy all the groceries he'd need so that he didn't need to live off of what other people gave him.

   The man looked around the small apartment building. It was cramped and messy, he'd really let the place go. As he looked around something caught his eye. He got up from the chair and picked up a magazine that was under the small white table next to his tatami.

   On the cover was a picture of his favorite childhood superhero. He looked at it and a small smile crossed his face. He remembered his carefree younger days when he used to spend hours upon hours watching cartoons and pretending to be a hero. 

   His mother would tie a white blanket around his neck and he would run around the house, pretending to beat up monsters, save citizens and get the lady at the end of it all. 

   He longed for the times when his next meal or paying the bills wasn't the first thing on his mind. He yearned for his younger days when he saw the world in endless colors, instead of shades of depressing blues.

   "When I grow up I'm going to be a hero and all the bad guys will tremble at just the sound of my name!"

   The memory of his own words shocked the man a bit. And, just for a moment, he imagined it. There he stood, in a cool-looking superhero costume, on a mountain of dead monsters, looking down heroically at the crowd gathered around the pile.

   "It's him, the hero!"

   "I love you Mr. Hero!"

   He laughed so hard it brought him right out of his preposterous imagination. Him? A hero? The most heroic thing he had ever done was question if whether the yen a tough-looking thug guy gave him was real. 

   The man sighed and pushed himself back to his desk, and returned to looking for a job online. He'd never be a hero. he'd never do anything heroic like the characters from the manga's and comics he read. No. He would always be the dude stuck with the crappy jobs, living alone in a tiny cramped apartment.