Our unnamed protagonist who is asphyxiating under the stress of trying to make a living in the heart of Tokyo city struggles to find inspiration for his daily hustle and almost gives up until he is late for work one day and decides to take a slow an...
'6:30 a.m.', I checked the alarm clock, struggling to make sense out of the numbers on the digital clock display through my drowsy and hazy gaze. As I tried to regain complete consciousness, I was gently patted on my back by my window curtains, like a motherly force trying to wake me up. The contrast lied in the fact that I didn't have a school day to look forward to but rather yet another day of hustle identical to what the multitude of citizens in the metropolis go through every day.
Life hasn't been any special since I moved to Tokyo two years back - contrary to what my newly graduated self thought while picking up the luggage and staring into the endless, blue skies with eyes full of dreams. Adulting really does a brilliant job of burying your dreams alive - it's like a cesspool of new dreams and aspirations that just flee to their fateful end - like moths to a lamp.
As an aspiring architect, I didn't hope to land the fattest pay-cheque but didn't expect to crash into a minimum-wage-maximum-effort job either, that too in the heart of the city. It takes about twenty minutes to my current office in a tube - truly the fastest and most affordable way of flying to the workplace.
My life was falling into an unhealthy pattern of the same, redundant activities - six hours of work, an hour of commute, weekly cafe visits with a few willing co-workers, and at the most a trip to a nearby bar or karaoke whenever we felt a bit more thrifty once every few months. The sense of emptiness and automation inside me was spiralling out of control and all I could do was observe.
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Today was a Thursday, not that it holds any significance - every day is identical to the other. I just kept track of the date to keep a daily check on my mental sanity. I went off to my job as usual and hoped the weekend approached a bit faster.
Today was exceptionally draining - forced overtime hours at work which made me miss my last metro trip back to my apartment. I thus had to settle for a bus ride home which is a brutal experience at that time of the day. To add to my fatigue was the excessive duty of making my own dinner. Not that I'm in the habit of making fancy delicacies. Instant ramen and ready-to-boil soup mixes were my favourite candidates for dinner - obviously because of the minimal effort I had to put into making them.
I looked over to the dirty dishes that seemed to pile up into a hill in my sink and thought about making dinner, but today's exhaustion was too much for me to bring myself together to do it. So, I loosened my tie and allowed my tiredness to get the better of me as I surrendered my body to the force of gravity, almost dropping dead on my bed. As I stared into the claustrophobia-inducing yet surprisingly empty and blank ceiling, I thought to myself, "What did I do to end up like this. What.... did I do wrong?". After much contemplation, it became clear to me that my birth - the very beginning of my mere existence was from when things started to go South. "I never slacked off at my academics or made any significant bad decision. Why did it all go wrong?", I continued thinking until I cant anymore as I plunged into the sweet embrace of sleep - truly the best and quickest exit pathway out of life.
