CHAPTER 1

A few months earlier......

[Unknown]

[Office]

The ridges of my mouth tasted like iron. Slabs of thick concrete pinned half my limp body to the cold floor.

Faint streaks of light pierced through the cracks of the destroyed ceiling, casting long shadows over the lifeless bodies of my colleagues. Their broken corpses were scattered across the floor. Some had their limbs twisted unnaturally, some clamped beneath the debris, some missing an arm or a leg, and some skewered by metal poles.

An earthquake had struck earlier. I must’ve blacked out during the chaos and only became conscious of the aftermath. Other than the occasional noise of shifting rocks, my surroundings were quiet.

I lay in silence, hardly breathing properly, with the air scraping my bloodied and sensitive nostrils.

I took a long breath out through my mouth.

The dust on my face danced.

Then fell.

My irritated eyes stared at the low, hanging light above me.

The detached feeling in my legs was rather unsettling. It was a good indication that my spine was broken. The concrete on me was perhaps the most probable culprit. I should file a case against this concrete, please see me in court tomorrow. We will have a serious discussion about why you should not be breaking someone's spines, as well as your morality and mental health regarding your emotionless face when enacting such unsettling acts of aggression. The supreme court should look into this. A man in a heated debate against a rock is the first in human history, we will be deciding the fate of a rock, there's no better header than that.

Other than seeking justice from being assaulted by an inanimate object. There wasn’t much else to do. In this situation, people might feel despair, fear, or both. Yet there was a strange calmness to it.

Despite my current condition, my mind was wandering in a field of its own.

If there was something for me to be compared to, then it would be one pile of food waste thrown into a garbage dump. Looking at myself, maybe I am one. Currently, my pureed innards reflect that comparison well.

I only woke up to work today, yet this is how things ended up. This is bullshit. For a whole building to collapse on a perfectly good day, where there's little to no work, and me having fun disregarding what my younger colleague’s mumbling was. Isn’t this just damning? Not only am I jobless now, but also a cripple. Living will be a nightmare moving forward.

Hmm.

Is it karma?

If I was working earnestly, if I heard my colleague out, would this whole situation have not happened in the first place?

Though I'm not necessarily religious, it is somewhat possible. Maybe it is karma. On second thought, I think it's the best route. Since I'm going to die, there wouldn't be work anymore, no more sleepless nights, and no more irritating colleagues talking to me. I'm convinced, this is, by all means, the best outcome no matter how you look at it.

“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it?”

That question was in my head.

It was a question from a younger colleague at work, who pestered me half the day. He was a person who had little understanding of how harsh reality could be. I wish I could have given him a 500-page breakdown of how life wouldn’t go the way he thought it would.

But for me? I certainly would not.

That question is full of shit. In my humble opinion, it’s stupid.

While my colleague might find this statement ridiculous, I believe I am completely rational.

Life handed me nothing but unreasonable demands, neglect, and abuse, whether it was from society or my family. I only worked for the sake of working, to feed myself. Because of that, my colleagues considered me a statue—someone who rarely talked but was always there. Well, they were not far off.

They all had their lives, families to feed, and children to look out for.

What did I have? A father who only saw me as a tool for his own gain? The same person who wanted to kill me when I was a child? I’d rather walk through a road of shattered glass than waste another second of my life with him. Such an idea of enjoying childhood is foreign to me now. Going back in time would be a nightmare. I would rather die than let it happen. Funnily enough, I may die right here.

I coughed, and blood draped my cheeks red like some morbid paint.

My breaths were getting tighter. The dust clung to the air, mingling with a putrid, mucus-like substance that bubbled with every inhale I took, suffocating me on the inside. The back of my throat was dry. I couldn’t even swallow my saliva.

Ahahah...... I’m tired.

Maybe I should be grateful. Now that I’ll be facing my death, I won’t have to worry about anything anymore. I wanted to cry, yet no tears came out. I suspect they’ve dried up over all these years.

“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it?”

The question returned to the back of my mind and echoed.

“If you lived your life again, would you do it?”

“If you live your life again...... do it?”

“Live your life...... do it.”

.......I feel sleepy.

For someone who used to work nonstop, I am a person who despises sleeping, deeming it something inefficient. Imagine wasting 8 hours on something trivial like sleep. I would rather stay up all night and watch leaves fall.

Although I say this, I’ve always wanted to welcome sleep without being plagued by nightmares and dreaming like a normal human being. This time could be that exception. There certainly have been things that I’ve never been able to do. Even I had dreams. Tiny, yet in the end, futile dreams. Those are gone now.

My head felt fuzzy, and my eyelids were getting heavier with each passing thought.

The world around me blurred into a mess. The pain I felt throughout my body was now gone, and the tips of my fingers grew colder.

I exhaled a long, pneumatic sigh and surrendered to it.

I slept.

“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it? I mean, think about it. For me, going back to childhood sounds great. Playing with old friends, having no worries. Shit, it makes me happy and sad at the same time. What about you?”

“Me? Why ask?”

“Just curious. Would you do it? It’s like a second chance to make things right. Don’t you ever wish you could escape to simpler times?”

“......”

“Isn’t that worth going back for?”

“No, no. It's just too much of a hassle.”

. . .

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