Night Exile || 𝗞𝗮𝗲𝘆𝗮 𝘅 𝗔𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗼 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗔𝗨

|01| Apathy

Kaeya Alberich was the biggest failure on earth.

For a long time, he had felt that whatever he was doing, all misfortune was drawn to him as if he were a living magnet. At first, of course, he felt sorry for himself and tried to escape his destiny as a loser. Now he just kind of started to accept his shitty fate, knowing there was nothing he could do.

Even if there was an option to get out of this quagmire, he simply didn't have the strength, the desire, or the money to do so.
Money, or rather the painful lack of it, is the biggest problem and also the most significant blockage that prevents him from enjoying his life at twenty-five, mostly because he barely makes ends meet each month.

Through his own stupidity, of course. Maybe because no one really taught him what adult life is like and how to find himself in it.
His beloved father, whom he treated as the greatest role model, leaving this pretty fucked up world and thus abandoning him as a child with a woman who did not particularly dream of becoming a mother at such a young age, was most likely the beginning of this spiral of madness. Actually, his mother wasn't a bad parent because he always had a full stomach and a roof over his head like every kid should; she was just emotionally absent to the point that a simple hug was like a fairy tale for him.

As a kid, he often fooled himself into thinking he was part of some fairy tale he read tons of books about, where as a prince, he was able to find the love of his life and could hear a simple "I love you" as often as he wanted. Such daydreaming gave him enormous comfort and hope for sunshine after a dark storm until he got older and finally realized how stupid and unrealistic it was and just stopped, never doing it again.

Thinking about it now, this form of processing and dealing with reality would be the best way to keep him from ending up where he is right now: unhappy, lonely, bored, and with a terrible hangover.

There are many ways to deal with problems, and he has chosen to drown himself in alcohol and occasionally find some one-night stands that he meets at parties or bars to make him feel wanted, at least for a short while. Despite all this effort, he always runs away in the morning to avoid the consequences. Nevertheless, this momentary feeling of ecstasy has successively made him some sort of addicted, as he continued to crave more like a pathetic a man-whore.

Sure, he wasn't proud of it, and neither was his father, who surely must be turning in his grave thinking about what his son had become. He wanted him to become a lawyer or a doctor or whatever people need these days and got a son who sleeps around left and right and spends all his meager hard-earned money standing at the sink and washing dishes on booze. 

Kaeya felt his eyes sting for a moment of weakness and collapsed onto bus stop bench next to which he passed lifelessly. As he fumbled in his trouser pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, his other hand flicked on the phone to check the time on the display, which hurt his eyes with its brightness.

He grunted dissatisfied and rubbed his eyes with his hand. The display showed in huge numbers that it was almost three AM, thus explaining why in this endlessly huge and melancholic pandemonium called the city he lived in, he was utterly alone at the bus stop; it's just that the last buses left a long time ago.

It didn't really bother him that much. On the contrary, he had gotten used to it and quite liked being only in his own company since it gave him a sense of power and stability. At least no one will ever hurt him again and he won't disappoint anyone but himself.

Kaeya exhaled a heavy air from his lungs, then put the cigarette between his lips and began dealing with the damn lighter, which had been barely functioning for a long time now. After several failed attempts, the heat of the little flame finally pleasantly warmed his cold hands, which he placed carefully to his lips, lighting the cigarette.