Alwin’s POV
Have you ever experienced reaching a point where you wanna surrender life? Have you ever experienced reaching a point where you wanna leave everything behind and just run so far away as much as possible even though you don’t know where your feet would bring you? As long as you are running away from reality.
Because of so much ill-fated circumstances happening in my life, I almost did it, but no matter how much I convince myself to do it so that I won’t have any problems anymore and I can finally breath properly, I can’t. I can’t because I love my family. I love everyone around me. I can’t leave them.
So even though I’m already having a hard time, I still continue working day and night just to help my family and assist our daily needs.
I am the only child of my parents that’s why I am also the only one supporting us. My father couldn’t walk anymore due to diabetes while my mother has a first stage cancer—reasons why I need to work harder.
I study and work in the school’s library when I have free time in the morning meanwhile I work as a waiter in a restaurant two blocks away from our house every night so I can finally get my mother operated any time sooner before the cancer could spread all over her body.
The rain is pouring very hard tonight. I carry an umbrella while walking down the empty sidewalk towards my workplace to avoid getting wet from the pouring rain. It’s almost seven in the evening so I walk faster to reach there on time. I shriek when a black car suddenly speeds off that causes my white uniform that I had just literally washed yesterday get soak with filthy mud, even my face is covered with mud! Dipshit!
“Ahhh!” I scream in anger because mud is definitely not easy to remove from the white clothes and I don’t have much time to wash this. The last time I got my white uniform dirty took me an eternity to remove the stains.
I sigh in defeat and continue walking my way until I reach the restaurant. I get in through the back door that leads to the crew’s changing room. When my friend, Sean, sees my dirty state, he gasps. Who wouldn’t get shocked at you if your clothes and face is like this while coming to work?
He approaches me and examines me from head to toe. “What happened to you, Alwin? Why do you look like you just crawled out from the mud?” He asks and pulls me inside the dressing room. Does he really have to say it out loud? I already know that I look like a trashcan, no need to inform me!
Once we enter inside, he immediately spins me around like I’m some kind of a spinning toy that makes me dizzy.
“What the hell, Sean! I’m starting to get dizzy!” I exclaim so he finally stops spinning me around. I try to glare at him but I can’t because I feel like the world is spinning. It takes me a whole godddamn minute before my vision comes back to normal.
He laughs at me giddily. He enjoys making fun of my pitiful state that I want to throw a mud at him too so I can also laugh at him. He takes a blue uniform from the standee and hands it to me.
Blue color is our dress code in this restaurant. When I asked our head manager why the dress code is blue, he said that blue is the favorite colour of the restaurant owner’s late wife. He loves her so much that he made some changes in the restaurant that would make him remind of her like how he replaced the name of the restaurant into ‘Rose’s Speacial’ instead of ‘Kittibun’s’ because it was his late wife’s name, like how he changed the fragrant smell of the restaurant into roses instead of orchids because it was his late wife’s name and favorite flower. Those are some of the changes he had made.
“Here. Take your uniform off immediately so I can wash it up before I go home,” he offers. I roll my eyes at him before I take off my dirty uniform and hands it to him. “A thank you would suffice,” he adds so I roll my eyes at him again.
Sean and I has been friends for a very long time. We met at highschool when I saw him getting bullied by our schoolmates at the school’s lobby because of his feminine features even though he’s a boy. I couldn’t endure listening to the hurtful words the bullies were throwing at him while he was just looking downcast and didn’t do anything to defend himself so I approached them. I was the one who argued with the bullies instead of him until we reached the point of using our bare fist. One versus three. We just stopped when the teachers finally separated us from each other.
My body was full of bruises then but I didn’t care as long as I had given those assholes a taste of my fist. The teachers brought us all to the principal’s office to give us a detention but the principal immediately let me and Sean go when she found out what really happened.
Since then, we became inseparable and brothers for life. We’re always together until we reach college. And even in our work, we’re also together — though with a different shift. We can’t be separated. I’m happy to have a friend and a brother like Sean.
“Today is literally my unlucky day. A jerk had decided to speed off his car near me that caused the mud to splatter all over my uniform and don’t forget my face too,” I grumble while replaying the incident that had happened to me a while ago in my mind.
That person has no shame at all! He doesn’t have any consideration that his car had just ran over a mud and covered me with it! Maybe I can still forgive him if he had stopped and descended from his car to ask for my forgiveness. But no, he didn’t! He didn’t stop his car and ask for my forgiveness at all! Instead, he just continued speeding off! Rich spoiled brats and their expensive luxury car!
“Don’t think too much about it, okay? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Or that guy— whoever he was— was probably drunk as hell,” Sean says while pouring a lot of water in the basin to soak my uniform. I just shake my head and pour some water on my palm to wash my muddy face.
“I have to go. Thank you for washing my uniform, Sean. I appreciate it,” I thank him before going out of the dressing room.
His shift is already done so he’s good to go anytime while I’ll be the one to replace him. It’s always been like this. Once I arrive, he would go home because we don’t have the same shift. He only works three hours a day starting from four in the afternoon until seven in the evening while I work nine hours, starting from seven in the evening until four in the morning. We can only bond with each other at school though it’s only limited because I still have to work in the library on my free time.