Journey

7:45am

He leaves the house with his bag carelessly flung over one shoulder, fingers busily working through the knots that have formed in his earphones (because he’d just untangled them, for fuck’s sake). As always, he manages to sort through the chaos by the time he reaches the ground floor, and makes his way to the bus stop.

He’s strolling and halfway towards the bus stop when the bus itself thunders past him, and it takes a second to register before he finds himself chasing after the damned thing with a curse sharing the space in his throat with his heart, jamming his earphones into his ears as he runs.

8:02am

He boards the train at the same time every day, and glances at the map out of habit. As always, he counts eighteen stops to his destination and sighs.

8:10am

He looks up. She always boards the train at the third stop, and today is no different. She’s interesting to watch, he decides, because she looks like she’s tried too many times to piece herself together, only to give up in the end and settle for attempting to make a mural out of the shards she has left. The result is that she looks utterly broken, yet makes for an exquisite masterpiece.

As always, he thinks to himself that she’s still a work-in-progress, but given time even the pieces that look a little too sharp will smoothen over (because she still looks a little too raw, like her stitching barely holds the seams together).

He has fifteen stops to go, and so turns the music up a little louder to drown out the voices and focus on what he can see instead of what he can hear.

8:13am

It’s the same sight by the sixth stop, the same faded orange hoodie shivering ever so slightly at the sudden drop in temperature that a step from the platform and into the train can cause. It’s a good thing that the hoodie’s been zipped all the way up, because its owner looks thinner than ever (how is that even possible?) and if those arms are any indication of body size then the hoodie’s hiding a much smaller frame than he remembers.

He remembers having gone through something similar, wonders if the hoodie hears the same demons whispering into its ear – the same sneering that followed him around for close to six years. He wonders how long it’s been since the hoodie had a proper meal.

From the looks of it, at least two and a half months.

8:25am

Business suits and office attire press against his sides, looking for all the world like packs upon packs of playing cards, colour and numbers being the only way to tell them apart. It’s suffocating to stand amongst such uniformity, though he is all too aware that these playing cards are considered one of the highest in the food chain (and it makes him hyper-aware and ever so slightly embarrassed of the cheap dress shirt he’s wearing).

He wonders, though, if anyone else sees how flimsy the pedestal they stand on is – like a house of cards, ready to topple with the slightest disturbance – and chuckles to himself.

Four stops to go, and five minutes for him to get to the office. As always, the playing cards shuffle out at the next stop, eager to build – and rebuild – their paper empires.

He curses under his breath.

8:40am

He bursts through the office’s glass doors, chest heaving and dress shirt slightly damp with sweat (sprinting in the humidity had not been one of his better ideas, though it wasn’t as though he’d had a choice). Struggling to catch his breath as he makes his way to his seat, he nods in greeting to his colleague, who only raises an eyebrow at him – it’s not his first time tardy to the office, though he's very lucky that the boss hasn't walked in just yet.

“Hey.”