He was carrying on with his explorative stroll, ignoring his recent mishap at the restaurant. He could see a huge overhead bridge, perhaps built for motorcars. Before that, there was a gasoline refill station, with a built-in shop.

“Like I would ever go into one of these things again”, he snorted as he gave it a look.

The rain had stopped for today but the mud was still there, as annoying as ever. He had to take extra steps to avoid it, he jumped up from the pedestrian trail to the elevated path used for people who had businesses on the side of the road.

He could see that the overhead bridge he saw before was just one of many, it seemed to be a junction of roads. There were four or five roads intersecting in the distance. He always wanted to climb one of these bridges and Alzeria seemed to have plenty of them.

He smiled faintly, exploration could wait a bit. For now he had every intention of trekking up to that bridge just for amusement.

“Never lose that childlike innocence, it keeps you going”, he often used to say that to himself.

He would have to get down to the main road, if he wanted to walk to the bridge. There was mud just below the point he was standing. He took in a deep breath, back tracked his steps, and charged. As he reached the edge of elevated path, he jumped towards the main road.

“Mud successfully avoided”, he seemed to be satisfied with himself.

It was the little things like this that kept the spirit intact, treating everything mundane as an important hurdle to overcome, kept him entertained. But especially, it kept the boredom away. Being never bored in an empty world was not an easy task by any means. He would have gone half-senile, or would have given in to severe paranoia if he lived a life only for the sake of survival.

He wasn’t far off the mark with his line of thought. Many had succumbed to the tedious and redundant lifestyle of living to survive another day. Their spirit had given in, they were nothing but empty husks of life now.

“Could such a living be called living at all?” he had thought of this before.

Hence, he strived to be different. And for that mindless entertainment was a necessary step.

“I am the last insane man in this abnormally sane world!” he shouted as he walked on the main road that was slowly elevating as he progressed.

His voice produced an echo that went all over the area, reverberating. He smirked and kept walking on the ascending road, now high enough that he could see buildings he couldn’t see before. In particular, there was a huge grey colored building in the distance that piqued his interest. Its structure looked very familiar.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Hmm”, he kept eyeing it as he now increased his pace.

And soon after, he was at the highest point of the bridge. Normally one wouldn’t have been able to stand here and admire the view. As this road was meant for fast moving motorcars. He could now see the building in grey. Turned out, it wasn’t just one building, there were four buildings, with one being under construction.

“Ah, no wonder it seemed familiar”, he spoke, reaching a realization. “This is an educational institution, most of them have that distinct structure that never changes”.

And his hunch was correct, he found a board indicating this was a university at some point.

“I’ve always wanted to go into one of these”, he sighed. “I never got to go into one of these back when everyone was alive”.

He hurriedly started to descend from the bridge. He learned two things that day.

First, descending is way easier than ascending.

Second, it is also way easier to lose your footing and stumble when the roads are slippery.

It was too late, he couldn’t keep his balance and went rolling down the wet road as if it was a water slide. Only stopping when he reached the bottom.

He remained laying there, looking at the sky filled with grey clouds, contemplating on his own stupidity. After a while of staying down, he sat up. His raincoat was ruined by dirty water.

“I would laugh, but this isn’t funny”, he said as he got up and looked at rain coat he was wearing, now dripping with mud water. He had found it in the store today after a meticulous search. “Damn and I really liked this one too”.

At least, his clothes were mostly safe from the muddy water at the expense of his raincoat’s sacrifice. Thinking of that silver lining, he took off and threw the rain coat at the side of the road.

“So long, I guess”, he said as he walked off towards the entrance to the university.

The area the university was occupying was large, and he seemed to be at the back side. There were no entrances here. He kept walked along the wall, hoping to eventually find the entrance, but after ten minutes of waking there was nothing new in sight.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?” he said huffing.

There was a wooden bench, under a shade, right next to the wall. He walked up to the bench and took off his backpack, putting it on the bench.

“I think I had a rope I stole, I mean borrowed from the wholesale store”, he said pillaging through his bag. “Ah, there it is!”

He took out the rope and tied a knot with a loop at its end, and walked back a few steps, gauging the height of the wall. At the very top of the wall, there were iron or steel spikes, meant to keep out intruders he guessed.

He started to swing the rope and threw it at the iron spikes, it missed of course.

“I sure suck at this”, he said disappointingly.

It took him six more tries until he got the rope stuck on a spike, and luckily it was a spike not far from the roof of the shade. He could grab the shade for support when vaulting over.

Thinking that, he wore his backpack and started to climb the rope, after reaching the top, he grabbed the edge of the shade and threw the rope to the other side, and vaulted over into the university grounds.