Chương 1: Unfortunate Scum

A dull-looking young man with dark circles under his eyes and caramel skin lay on a bed with a forearm covering his face; his jaw was well-bearded, and his mouth was in a faint frown. His forearm, hands, and even some of his fingers were covered in onyx-black hair; his skin was dry and ashy. He felt as if his life were coming to an end.

Taking a deep breath in, fresh air came in a breeze through his bedroom window; it was a deafeningly quiet dawn broken by the sounds of chirps from the nesting pigeons on his apartment's balcony, occasionally broken by the sound of stomping from his upstairs neighbours. His frown subtly deepened; most of his life has been unfortunate. Even with his bothersome neighbours, he was satisfied with his housing.

The apartment he resided in was for the less affluent; his neighbours were typically people who were forgotten or addicted to a vice. Even with the occasional sound that may have been a gunshot, a murder, or another crime, he felt alright with it. Though he felt it, it was only a matter of time until that comfort was lost.

June was not ill, he was not being threatened with death, and he was not in any real danger, but to his dismay, he had just caught up with a web novel that he had started reading a couple months ago. June didn't really have much; he had a PC that he worked for, a dog that he deeply loved, and 2 main vices: a D&D podcast that included his role model and a novel he was obsessed with. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

His dog was his tether to his family; June hated his family. He was the youngest of 3; his father drowned himself in alcohol since June's birth; his mother was pathetically hopeless; his sister, who was the eldest, had sociopathic tendencies; and his brother, who was the middle child, lived in his own head and forced imaginary ideals down June's throat. He was used to being a punching bag, and he would willingly take more if it meant his dog had a good life.

June, however, was human; he could continue to challenge life in a game of endurance, but unfortunately he had a limit. He caught up with both the novel he was reading and the podcast; those two things, his vices, were his escape from reality, and without his escapes, his mind fell into dissecting itself, finding more and more reasons to give up. June himself knew that it was unhealthy, but he had little choice; it seems the pathetic hopelessness of his mother was passed on to him as well.

He felt like his body was drying up to accommodate his brain's frantic search for a reason to live, but every thread that he grasped would pluck itself, leaving him to keep spiralling downwards. He felt like he was wrong for being; he felt like his personality was false; he felt as if his being was false, his own essence, his concept felt denied. Though this is not a fantasy world, he would not simply die because he gave up; he would just continue to rot instead.

His intrusive thinking would not stop; he adjusted the forearm that he placed against his eyes and decided to rest even though it was already dawn.

A few seconds later, he felt a searing heat. A deep discomfort plagued him in what felt like his soul; it was an abstract and quite alarming sensation. And then he felt the world twist.