Kazuya Fujimoto sat in his tiny, dimly lit apartment, staring at the termination email on his laptop screen. The words blurred together, but he didn’t need to read them again—he knew what they said. "We regret to inform you..." They didn’t even have the decency to fire him in person.

He closed the laptop and leaned back against the peeling wallpaper, exhaling a long, exhausted sigh. Thirty years old. Unemployed. Alone.

When he was younger, he had dreams. He was supposed to make it big as a software engineer, maybe even start his own company. But reality had crushed him bit by bit—overtime hours that led to burnout, a toxic boss who took credit for his work, and now, being discarded like trash.

He glanced around his one-room apartment. A pile of unopened bills sat on the table. His fridge was nearly empty. His parents had long given up on him, and he had no friends left. His girlfriend broke up with him two years ago, saying he had "no future."

And maybe she was right.

Kazuya stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the neon lights of Tokyo shimmered against the night sky. Below, the streets bustled with people moving forward in life—something he had failed to do.

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “What’s the point?”

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The thought had been creeping in his mind for months, but now it solidified. He had nothing left. No money, no career, no reason to keep going. He made his decision.

He climbed onto the railing of his tiny balcony. The street was eight stories below. If he jumped, it would be instant. No more pain. No more regrets. Just... nothing.

He closed his eyes. “Goodbye, world.”

Then, he slipped.

It wasn’t the graceful, dramatic leap he imagined. His foot caught on a loose wire, and instead of a clean fall, he tumbled sideways. His body crashed into a tangled mess of laundry lines and banners from the shop below. He spun, bounced off an awning, and finally landed hard in a pile of trash bags in the alleyway.

For a long moment, he didn’t move. He wasn’t dead. In fact, he barely had a scratch.

Somehow, even in death, he had failed.

“Are you kidding me?” he groaned, staring up at the night sky. The smell of rotten food filled his nose, and he realized with horror that he had landed in a pile of someone’s thrown-out dinner.

This was the lowest point of his life.

But as he lay there, something strange happened.

He started to laugh. At first, it was just a chuckle, but soon it turned into full-blown, uncontrollable laughter. It was all so ridiculous. He had planned the perfect ending, and the universe had rejected him.

And for the first time in years, he felt something other than despair.

Maybe… just maybe… this was a sign.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to die.

Maybe he could start over.

As the neon lights flickered above him, Kazuya Fujimoto pulled himself out of the trash, dusted himself off, and took his first step forward.

He had hit rock bottom. The only way left was up.