CHAPTER 0
[Unknown]
[Unknown]
“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it?”
. . .
The ridges of my mouth tasted like iron. Slabs of thick concrete pinned half my limp body to the cold floor. Faint streaks of light pierced through the cracks of the destroyed ceiling, casting long shadows over the lifeless bodies of my colleagues.
Their broken corpses were scattered across the floor. Some had their limbs twisted unnaturally, some clamped beneath the debris, some missing an arm or a leg, and some skewered by metal poles.
An earthquake had struck earlier. I must’ve blacked out during the chaos and only became conscious of the aftermath.
Other than the occasional noise of shifting rocks, my surroundings were quiet.
I lay silent. Each breath I took was ragged.
I feel like one pile of food waste thrown into a garbage dump. Looking at myself, maybe I am one. Currently, my pureed innards reflect that comparison well.
I only woke up to work today, yet this is how I ended up.
Quite the bullshit. Isn’t this just damning?
I took a long breath out of my mouth.
The dust on my face danced.
Then fell.
My irritated eyes stared at the low, hanging light above me. The detached feeling of my legs was rather unsettling. There wasn’t much else I could do. In this situation, people might feel despair, fear, or both. Yet there was a strange calmness to it.
Despite my current condition, my mind was wandering in a field of its own.
“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it?”
That question was in my head.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It was a question from a younger colleague at work. He was a person who had little understanding of how harsh reality could be. I wish I could have given him a 500-page breakdown of how life wouldn’t go the way you thought it would.
But for me? I would certainly not.
That question is full of shit. In my humble opinion, it’s stupid.
While this statement seems ridiculous, I believe I am completely rational.
Life handed me nothing but unreasonable demands, neglect, and abuse, whether it was from society or my family.
I only worked for the sake of working, to feed myself. Because of that, my colleagues thought of me as a statue—someone who rarely talked but was always there. Well, they were not far off.
They all had their lives, families to feed, and children to look out for.
What do I have? A father who only saw me as a tool for his own gain? The same person who wanted to kill me when I was a child? I’d rather walk through a road of shattered glass than waste another second of my life with him.
Such an idea of enjoying childhood is foreign to me now.
Going back in time would be a nightmare. I would rather die than let it happen. Funnily enough, I may die right here.
I coughed, and blood draped down my cheeks.
My breaths were getting tighter. The dust clung to the air, mingling with a putrid, mucus-like substance that bubbled with every inhale I took, suffocating me on the inside. The back of my throat was dry. I couldn’t even swallow my saliva.
Ahahah? Ahahah...... I’m tired.
Maybe I should be grateful. Now that I’ll be facing my death, I won’t have to worry about anything anymore. I want to cry right now, yet no tears came out. I suspect they’ve dried up over all these years.
“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it?”
The question returned to the back of my mind and echoed.
“If you lived your life again, would you do it?”
“If you live your life again...... do it?”
“Live your life...... do it.”
Ahhh...... my head felt fuzzy and my eyelids were heavy. The world around me blurred into a mess.
I am a person who despises sleeping, deeming it as something inefficient. Imagine wasting 8 hours on something trivial like sleep. I would rather stay up all night and watch leaves fall.
Although I say this, there certainly have been things that I’ve never been able to do. Even I had dreams. Those are gone now.
For the first time, I want to welcome sleeping like a normal human being and dream again. This time is an exception.
The pain I felt throughout my body was now gone, and the tips of my fingers grew colder.
I exhaled a long, pneumatic sigh and surrendered to it.
I closed my eyes and slept.
. . .
“If you had the choice to live your life again, would you do it? I mean, think about it. For me, going back to childhood sounds great. Playing with old friends, having no worries...... shit, it makes me happy and sad at the same time. What about you?”
“Me? Why ask?”
“Well, nothing, just out of curiosity.”
“Go on.”
“Now, back to the question, would you do it? It’s like a second chance to make things right. Don’t you ever wish you could just escape back to simpler times?”
“......”
“Isn’t that worth going back for?”
“No....... no, too much of a hassle.”
. . .
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