"Bloodstone is a dream's grave" said the chubby man while he was walking on the main street of the city holding a leather briefcase in his right hand.

He exhaled and tried to loosen his red tie a little bit while breathing heavily.

"Come to Asotol, the company can survive without you too, you know " answered a tall man who was following him at the same pace. He looked concerned as he looked around him as if he was waiting for someone to attack them occasionally.

‘’Don't worry Carl, nobody is going to harm you" commented Mark and he raised his right hand which was holding the briefcase to take a look at his watch.

‘"You still have the watch on the right hand?"

He noticed Carl and kept looking towards the pavement where two teenagers were playing with a soccer ball. "How do you live here? The cockroaches have a better quality of life..."

Without answering, Mark paused and checked out carefully a building at the corner that looked like it was still standing by luck.

Then he looked at Carl and they nodded to one another in affirmation.

They turned at the building's corner and the sun hid at once behind the stacked apartment buildings. It was like someone had compressed them so suffocating that you could expect them to explode from time to time

"Seriously now Mark, do people really live here?" asked Carl looking at the old blocks of flats with the cables jutting out dangerously from every possible and impossible spot.

"Whole families too..." he pointed with his index finger at a small window with a half-dried succulent popping up from the inside of the apartment "that was the house that I grew up"

Carl was looking from the window to Mark alternatively. Everything seemed so unfamiliar to him from his own reality.

"Don't be so surprised. Knowing a person from his thirties and his forties doesn't mean that you know everything about him"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The two of them kept on walking taking their eyes from the window as they saw a boy staring at them from the inside.

"Yeah right, we exist too" whispered the boy and poured some water on the plant.

His room was dark and full of empty cans of fast food. Apart from that, the room wasn't that dirty, if you didn't consider of course the one seated sofa with the pile of dirty clothes.

"I have to get ready" he thought, dragging his body towards his small bathroom. The apartment where he lived looked more like a small attic than a place where an actual human being could live. There was a room which was combining a bedroom and a kitchen while in a small closed space, there was a bathroom.

He had started living alone when he was eighteen as his mother had died at a young age and his father was one of those men that they called cockroaches in Asotol. This means, a man with no future who only lives to drink and make the life of his family a living nightmare.

He put on the best of the clothes that he could find in the pile of washed clothes that he had left on the edge of his bed and he left locking the door behind him. The corridors of the building were very dirty and dark with not even a hint of light. He carefully walked down the steps listening to a baby crying from the second floor and he opened the front door of the building, knowing that it was possibly his last chance of turning upside down his whole bad luck.

He had a good feeling from the moment he raised from his bed that morning. With that in mind, he started walking towards the ramen restaurant, where he had found by luck a job posting a few days ago.

The shop was in an alley with several small shops. A tattoo shop, a small restaurant, and a small bar where all the "cockroaches" of the town were gathering. The night was full of colorful neon lights from the stores' signs even though some of them were flickering because of how old they were.

A venting machine in one of the intersections of the narrow streets, had three remaining bottles of water inside, looking almost abandoned. He threw one of the coins that had been left over in his pocket, which weren't much, and he took one of the bottles. He felt like he hadn't quenched his thirst more in his life before that exact moment.

The shop where he was going to get interviewed was one of the few which hadn't a neon sign. In contrast to that, it had a wooden sign with a highly ornate font, and below there was a glass partition and the entrance door.

Taking a quick look around, his eyes found the eyes of a boy his own age, who smiled awkwardly at him. Then he took the decision to get inside. The sound of a bell ringing filled the room as he opened the door and everyone inside turned to look at him

"Good evening!" a thin, young lady called while smiling widely at him. Her eyes were big and bright, but as he got closer to her, they seemed to change for a fraction of a second. They turned clouded and lifeless like there was nothing inside them.

"You have to be Dan..." she said and extended her hand towards him for a handshake while smiling so widely that her face looked almost deformed.