Misery begets Hope

Ignorance is bliss

Vincent squints his brown eyes as he tries to glare at the lonely sun floating in the endless blue.

He drags his legs and forces them to walk. His body reluctantly follows and he finally starts to walk like a "normal person who's definitely excited about the day"

He runs his fingers through his hair far too many times to scratch an itch that doesn't exist. He constantly adjusts his mask to cover most of his face (he feels naked without a mask these days)

He maintains random eye contacts with random things, be it the sky, the nearby trees or even the buildings. He does his best to not look at people because he thinks every being that has eyes will despise at the sight of him.

He's too conscious of every little tearing on his clothes. He's afraid that an insecurity can peer through anytime and anywhere.

Vincent really does walk as if he's the living dead. It's as if he's carrying a huge load of despair on his back and there's always a cloud of gloom hovering over his head.

It's almost a two kilometre walk towards the bus stop and Vincent stumbles on small rocks atleast half of that distance. It's clearly a comedic tragedy how Vincent walks.

He finally arrives at the bus stop and makes his way towards a small corner and stands a few feet away from the crowd.

He never gets on the first bus and waits till atleast half of the crowd is gone. He gets on the bus never in a hurry and sits at the last row by the window.

The bus hasn't started yet but he takes out his broken earphones which barely work and puts them on. They don't cancel the noise but they help him pretend like he's busy and shouldn't be bothered.

(It's not like people are dying to talk to him but he's too much of an introvert to not do this)

The bus is nearly an hour ride and all he does is obsessively check the news on his phone and occasionally stare out the window. He couldn't care less about sports but he doesn't skip any headline because it helps him kill time (if only killing himself was that easy)

His fellow commuters are gentleman who's phone audio levels are anything but gentle while they swipe through social media statuses (also obsessively)

While everyone is doing their best to not indulge with eachother's business the bus is about to arrive at Vincent's stop.

He agressively puts his earphones inside his bag and his phone inside his pant's pocket. He gets up and goes near the door as if he's a small fish swimming through a crowd of piranhas. He does his best to not let his mask be out of place and gets off the bus.

Now it's a ten minute walk towards his college.

Meanwhile

Lucious stays nearby the college (it's a 5 minutes bike ride but he loves to take the longer route via the main road instead of the streets)

He smiles at every person and every dog that comes along his way. He doesn't use headphones during the daytime because he loves the world's noise and it's deafening static is a melody for him.

He fills his empty stomach with the morning breeze and the countless number of horns and curses by people and cars.

He's only a couple of minutes away from the college now and as usual he picks up the pace of peddling and starts to race his shadow.

As he cycles forward he sees this tall skinny curly haired guy who's walking as peculiarly as his dead grandma.

He slows down to observe this person who is constantly looking at all directions. Lucious understandably thinks that this is a blind guy that's struggling to walk (even though that person doesn't have a guide stick)

He thinks that he might as well help him as they're going the same way. As he approached this guy he awkwardly realises that this is no blind person is probably just a silly paranoid kid who's late for class.

Now he picks up his pace again and peddles as fast as he can to not make that guy suspicious of him. He storms off towards the college as if he's being chased by the dogs that he smiled at (he knows that it's weird but can't help it)

Vincent, is understandably dumbfounded. He's wondering why this quirky guy wearing ugly glasses almost ran him off with his even uglier bike.

He sighs and reiterates to himself that people are just naturally jerks (atleast everyone he interacts with are)

He hastily makes his way to the college gates and disappointedly sighs again before entering.