Prologue - Mr Average

It was just another boring day in the life of just another boring man. After all, nobody could ever question the fact that David was boring. At 25 years old, David had achieved little of note in his life. He graduated from college with three average A-level results. He went on to study at an average university, where he obtained an average degree in English language. All in all, his academic life could be accurately summarised in one simple world – average.

On top of this, David had few interests to speak of. There was a time when he loved video games, anime and books, and would spend hours each day immersed in these fantasy worlds, shutting himself off from reality for hours at a time. Perhaps it was these largely sedentary interests that led to David becoming the size he is today, with an immense 300lbs on his six foot 3 inch frame. Should you bring this up with him, David would simply offer a self-deprecating smile, and with the well used laughter lines around his dark brown eyes crinkling merrily, he would explain, “I managed to lose around 30lbs, but I just can’t seem to shift the rest of it.”

The truth was, David cared little about his appearance. He was employed as an English teacher, and had been teaching in Japan. He knew that he needed to look presentable, and so he was normally well groomed, trimming his nails, shaving and going for haircuts on a regular basis. He also showered twice daily, a necessity in the humid climate that he had been living in. David plodded through life, living day after day in abject apathy, neither caring nor desiring to care about anything or anyone. It had been this way for years; David didn’t blame anyone for the way he was. It was true that he had had something of an abusive adolescence. From the age of 13-23, his mother had found a man that made both of their lives miserable. Daily screaming matches that lasted for hours combined with violence against himself and his mother, as well as the destruction of household items on a regular basis, must surely have impacted his psyche to some degree, he supposed, but he did not blame it on anyone else. His mother suggested that he should talk to a professional about his problems, but David had no desire to do this. He was who he was, he didn’t need pills and he damn sure didn’t need some stranger’s opinion of his life.

The only remarkable thing about David was his intelligence. He received average grades in his academic life for one simple reason, he was lazy, and he would be the first to admit that. He had never studied for a test in his life. He did the bare minimum in any and all situations. Often, when he scored particularly highly in an exam, he would jokingly think to himself, “I wonder how well I could have done if I actually put any work into that.” What the academic grades didn’t even begin to hint at, were some of David’s other skills. Perhaps as an unintended benefit of his apathy, due to his abject lack of emotion, David could analyse a situation objectively and find the easiest, solution to almost any problem. These kinds of ‘problems’ included other people. He had made a couple of friends throughout his life, but nobody that could be considered a close friend. Throughout his university life, he had been considered a loner, sitting by himself in lectures and never even contemplating the idea of attending any of the seemingly endless parties that were thrown week after week. He would attend classes, and then shut himself in his room, emerging only to use the bathroom, or shop for groceries.

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As an expert at reading other people, David was nevertheless unsure on how to read himself. His job in Japan had ended a few months earlier, so now at 25 years old David found himself back in England, living with his mother, not exactly the situation he would’ve hoped to find himself in, if he’d thought about his future life, while he was at university. He had no real interest in the future. While looking for a job, it seemed that the negative of any possible career jumped out at him instantly, and he couldn’t really see any positives. But, of course, he would find something, and do the bare minimum to receive his paycheque each month.

There was only one thing that David really wished. He wished that he had been born 2000 years earlier. He wished he had lived in a time when people could simply fight to see who was the strongest. When people could train and go on epic adventures together, to achieve something that truly mattered. He wished that he could achieve the thrill of battle, the joy of victory, the pain of defeat. He wished, above all, that he could cast off the shackles of a 21st century world. The laws, the rules and the regulations that governed every part of his life. The social expectations that hung like a noose around his neck. Little did David know, his wish was about to come true…

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If you spot any mistakes with grammar, or any typos, or any coding mistakes, as I'm a total novice there, please feel free to let me know. I know this chapter was essentually just character building, but I think that's important in a story, even moreso with the main character.