I'M A MESS

Chapter One

The name's Aaron Godfrey. 

I live alone in one of the houses my family has in Katagashi City and I study in the preeminent academy in the prefecture, Empire High. Honestly, it's just one of your usual high schools. Only that it's tuition fee is a bold statement that it's only for the privileged few.

As I grew into the wealthy family I am in, I became spoiled.I carried this trait in me as I grew up.

I became carefree, dominant, and as said, spoiled. Really spoiled.

Multiple times have I received feedback of having quite an intimidating air whenever I get too serious, that's why I tried to change it into a lesser intimidating and a friendlier one. I smiled and laughed even more. That's when I started raking in the ladies. In the process, I somehow always get the top rank in school. People, relatives, they called me a 'prodigy'. A genius. 

Not to brag, but.. yeah.

Despite all these rather messed-up parts of me, one thing sets me straight and focused: photography.

The city had quite the clean and green standard so it wasn't that hard to find a good spot to drown myself in my secret hobby.

I took photos of the mountains closest to the city, the rivers cutting through the large virgin fields in the slopes, the city's night lights, natural phenomena. I bothered entering a local photography contest. I entered under my initials, A.G. and won first prize. 

Things somehow went the way I wanted them to. 

Life gradually became a bore. The world had laid out its options for me to choose from. 

'Which dessert would you like to have, sire?' ' Which do you prefer: gold or diamond?' 'Where do you want to go?' ' Is there anything you'd like?'

Eventually, everything became a simple game of yes or no. 

'Would a new furniture appease you?' 'Is crimson alright?' 'Are you by yourself?'

Moreover relationship-wise, I already dated at least nine or ten girls, and I'm still nineteen years old. My first girlfriend was probably around when I was eight years old. But let's not talk about that. All that matters right now is that I have the ladies, the money, and the prestige. All a man could ask for.

Yet for some unknown reason, I still feel this void screaming at my face, mocking me despite all those I possess.

I know I have everything, but there's still that persevering feel of lacking something which I don't have any idea what it even is. If only I could get my hands on that one thing, I think I'd feel no need for anything anymore. I wonder what it is..

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It was an overcast Saturday morning as I arranged the photos I had put up in the cork board I've had for as long as I could remember. Photos of several locations captured through diverse perspectives were pinned to the board, a few Post-Its in the middle of it all, and some blue yarn connecting a few together. As I pinned the last photo I recently took from the academy, I stepped back and exhaled loudly. Finally, it's done.

I placed my hands on my hips as I looked with great satisfaction at the neatly arrayed photos in my cork board. Pictures here of the city's wonderful blue seas, a seagull atop a buoy, a silhouette of my parents produced by a setting sun, the corpse of a bird lying amidst similarly dead leaves, a pen on an empty paper. I brushed my messy black hair to the back of my head with my fingers as I lifted my cup of hot coffee from my room's low-lying wooden bookshelf up to my lips. I sighed with satisfaction as I looked outside the french windows of my room on which the rain tapped on.