The day started like any other day. I finished my work at the downtown office where I had to speak many jargons and practiced corporate acting for my clients. Tom, my senior manager gave me a pat in the back. Good job today. You earned it. In the grey elevator down to the front lobby, I decided to look up from my phone which seemed to possess my attention span. I stared at my face. Was that stubble on my chin? Or was that a birth mark that seemed to get greyer every second? I was not sure. I could have gotten close to the mirror to find out. But I did not want to. Or maybe I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t sure what to do after. I stared at the clouds and the sky that seemed to loom over me, telling me that it is okay. That everything will be fine. One of the clouds resembled my seventh grade teacher, who always wanted the best for me and my other colleagues. When one of the students wasn’t performing the way he was able to, she would bake a cookie the next day to cheer him up. She did not reprimand him but encouraged him that it’s okay and that everything will be okay. I tasted one of the cookies; it was bitter and unsweet. But I remember complimenting her because she also deserved to know that it would be okay. That was a virtue of my childhood. Oh, the table had turned.
I glanced at the cloud again. It looked like any other cloud. Just circular, devoid of any shape or form. Certainly, not my seventh-grade teacher. I sighed. Sometimes, there were things that I wanted more out of my life and my desire for the cloud to look differently could be one.
The day was going to end like any other day. I was sitting down on a bench in the wooded park with a can of half-drunk Asahi lying next to my lap. I forgot whether I was the one who drank it or if I gave some away to a homeless lady who circled around my vicinity. The actions had passed so I would never know. I took a sip from the can. It was lukewarm and oddly sweet. It was bitter for sure but there was a hint of sweetness that could not be mistaken. I took a sip again; it was bitter.
I looked at the houses that were around me. They were in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some were red, some were yellow. Some had a triangular roof and others had a rectangular, concrete roof with a chimney that never seemed to stop running out of fume. At one glance, some resemble the work of a fairy tale and others showed the brutalism of the modern economy. I grinned at the juxtaposition. That’s when everything fell.
It started with the rain. At first, little trickles of rain fell onto my lap and my shoulder. Then, the rain grew harder and louder until I wondered if clouds were sentimental beings that just had to cry. I stood up—leaving behind my can of Asahi—and began running towards my apartment flat.
I remembered which turns I had to take to go back home. As I was following my own internal GPS, I suddenly wondered, could the homeless lady find her way back to her home as well? I sighed. She wouldn’t be homeless if she did have a home. I wondered if I could turn somewhere and find an umbrella for her. Or even some cardboard boxes that she could escape the rain from. The rain was pouring even harder. I shook my head. It was too late and there was no certainty that I would even be able to find her in the first place. I looked back again for a brief second and resumed my pace—deciding not to chase after my instincts.
After ten minutes of running, I turned the corner to where my apartment would lie. Like a man acting on the basis of his auto-pilotness, I ran a few feet, stopped, took out my key, and was ready to enter in when I discovered something that for the first time today, made me mutter a sound that came out of my very own primal instinct.
The apartment was not there. There was not a door in front of me. I looked around. None of the buildings had a shape that I could remember from my memory. They were all different sizes of rectangular buildings that seemed to be something a third-grader would be drawing as a lazy background. My heart began to beat louder. The rain grew louder. I walked away but each step felt heavier and heavier as I distanced away from what I thought was my home.
Another observation I made was the lack of people around me. Since the time I left my office, I remembered only encountering the homeless lady. There could have been more people around me. It was an astronomically low chance that in the middle of the downtown area I would not run into anyone other than a homeless lady. Yet, I could only remember her and her only. I frowned. I yelled out, “hellos” and “anyone there” but as time clocked away, even with my heightened sense of alertness, I came to a realization that there really wasn’t anyone around me.
The rain continued to pour down harder. The sky seemed to find joy in its sadistic nature as it poured down buckets of water over my body—scrapping off my sense of grounded realism and hope. My socks were soggy and my dress shirt under my suit was damp and uncomfortable. I even walked back to my office but the gate in front was closed. Still, no one to be found. I found myself alone and tears dripping off my chin and down to the flooded ground.
A day starts and eventually it will end. I remembered my senior manager telling this to me on an especially hard day at work. He said the hard day will be over and will be replaced by a fresh new day that will bring new chances and opportunities to correct oneself. It was sound logic. I believed him and on this day of rain and chaos, I desperately clung onto this thought such that the ordeal will pass and will be replaced by the original, natural structure of the world. As night befell onto the silent city, I found myself back in the park—my feet and arms huddled. The tree was shielding me from a complete downpour but the rain continued to hit my face. I was not sure if I was tasting salt from the rain or from my tears. I closed my eyes and wanted the day to be over. And knew that it will be over.
In the middle of the night, where the only sound was from the rain and my whimper, I felt a movement a foot away from me. I opened my eyes but it was still pitch dark. Amidst the darkness, I saw a silhouette of some sort.
Homeless lady? I tried to stand up but my body seemed to be paralyzed; I could not move a finger. Was my body disorienting due to the constant rain and cold? The figure in front of me stood up—it was a person. I could not see his or her face but the figure suddenly seemed to curve down and somersaulted. The mouth was open. It seemed to say something.
Tick. Tick. Tick. That’s what I heard but I could have been delirious from the rain and the cold. I was not sure if I should believe in my own sense of hearing or seeing.
Except my own logic. Then I remembered. The Asahi was nowhere to be found. Someone had come here. And the person in front of me was likely the same person.
I tried to voice out a cry for help but the figure continued to somersault. Rain, rain, rain. It seemed to say. Tick, tick, tick. It seemed to mumble.
When I opened my eyes again, it was morning. The rain had not stopped and I began to hyperventilate as coldness began to seep into my core. As my eyes got used to the surrounding, I noticed something peculiar. There were thousands of little aluminum shreds scattered all around the park. I stood up—back aching as I did—and grabbed onto one of the aluminum shreds. It spelled “A”. Asahi. A shiver passed down my spine. I visualized the figure from last night and the odd behavior that it portrayed. The rain continued to pour.
A day will always start but there was no guarantee that it would end. I screamed in utter, mental agony. I yearned for the cloud that looked like my seventh-grade teacher but it was not here to save me. The rain poured on and on.