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The old alarm clock clanged and scraped against the table beside the bed. The strange sound made the man's heart sink. Nicholas hurriedly turned off the clock, without even opening his eyes. Otherwise, it might fall to the floor and shatter.

It was a dark morning. He wanted to lie down again, but he knew it was not possible.

The exhausted worker annoyedly got up from the soggy bed, staggered out to the kitchen, and turned on the light there. A space narrow enough to take only two steps appeared out of the dark.

Nicholas, a middle-aged man drenched with fatigue, then put a sticky, greasy pan on the gas stove and opened the refrigerator. The old refrigerator was worn out and would not close properly, so he had to slam it several times.

Now, all he needed to do is to heat the pre-prepared food. A very simple and easy task to start his gloomy morning, thanks to Logan, Nicholas' eldest son. That boy could turn horrible ingredients into mouth-watering food―one of his extraordinary talents.

Nicholas silently praised his wonderful first son as he put the steaming stew on the plate. The dish was heavily seasoned to hide the spoiled ingredients, but it was good to fill the stomach.

Done with the quick meal, Nicholas left the now empty plate in the rusty sink and went to the bathroom. Like the sink, the rusty, messy shower was always fickle. Whenever the temperature was set, it sputtered hot and warm water alternately. Yes, this old man was the kind of person who would take a hot bath even in the middle of the scorching summer.

Nicholas needed to shave. So he turned to the water-soaked mirror and wiped away the steam. 

"Who..."

His miserable figure was reflected there. His tired green eyes (red and bloodshot from lack of sleep) looked into every nook and crevice of his face. His face looked even more tired in the dark orange light of the bathroom. He may have looked very handsome when he was young, but now the passage of time was noticeable. He had clear features and thick eyebrows, but his battered face couldn't hide his age.

Still, it was not easy to determine his age by looking down at his chin. His chest, from which warm water dripped, was so hard and firm that one could believe it was that of a young man. Below that, the well-heated abdomen and the delicate back muscles all looked alive, in contrast to the tired face. In a word, Nicholas' body was thick and muscular for his age.

Nicholas stepped out of the bathroom, wiping the wet hair with a towel before throwing it into the tub. His wet, light brown hair was covering his forehead in a mess. He picked up his oil-stained glasses and put on his old, stained work clothes, looking like a ruthless manual laborer.

"I'm going," said Nicholas to the yellowish painting in the compartment above the refrigerator.

Before going to work, he had a habit of complimenting his second son's old drawing. It was a picture of three people holding hands in the backyard of a house. And although distorted, the picture looked peaceful with the presence of a cute puppy and a rainbow floating in the sky.

Finally, to save on electricity bills, Nicholas did not forget to turn off the kitchen lights before leaving the house. The sky was glowing in the distance. It was always tiring to go to work early in the morning.

*   *   *

Nicholas inhaled the cold morning air, but it was not refreshing. His lungs felt as if they had been stabbed instead. He sighed and in silence waited until a scrap of a bus broke through the fog emerging like a ghost.

Rancid dampness and the smell of cigarettes greeted Nicholas as the bus door opened. He was the first occupant of this morning bus. Thanks to that, he was very lucky to be able to sit down and put his head against the window. The bus shook so much and made clanging sound all over. But being used to it, Nicholas was fast to fall asleep until the bus was gradually filled with his co-workers who all had tired faces.

None of the bus workers spoke. Only the rattle of the vehicle running and a noisy radio filled the void.

"The rainy season is getting longer than ever. According to the Meteorological Administration, if the rainy season lasts longer than 50 days, it is considered a sign of an abnormality..." said a news reporter on the radio.

Nicholas was awakened from his sleep. He imagined―the reporter, despite could only hear her voice through the radio, must be a well-dressed respectable person in her workplace. She did a good job of delivering the news. A great being. Unlike Nicholas who had no talents and wasn't able to contribute much to society.

Nicholas, too, had long dreamed to have a higher position job and being invited to see the inner city. But reality only allowed him to wear sweat and earth-stained work clothes. Moving to the center of the city was nothing but a mere dream.

The bus arrived at the workshop, spitting out people in beat-up work clothes. It was not a lively morning at all. Those people with tools in hand looked no more than a bunch of depressed worker ants.

Nicholas found his place in the workshop and started cracking rocks with a pickaxe. Another worker next to him did the same. In an instant, the whole workshop turned noisy with a deafening sound of the sharp point of the picks hitting the rocks. White dust soon filled the air, floating everywhere like a light mist. The dust caused lung illness.

Nicholas spat out a persistent cough, while hands, now and then, would wipe away the trickling sweat. Every time he blinked, his sweaty long lashes scratched the inside of his glasses, leaving dirt marks. But he could not even imagine cleaning it. The work continued to flow, and it was impossible to rest until the supervisor announced the break.

In this small workshop, workers had the task to extract valuable ore from rocks. First, a large portion of the workforce would extract this ore by breaking the rocks, and then moving them to the other cluster where they sort the minerals.

The rocks that formed when the mud hardened were easily cracked by the pickaxe. It was not hard, but doing this repeatedly, dozens of times could cause severe fatigue.

The supervisor's voice finally roared in the workshop. A break time.

Nicholas threw his pickaxe on the floor and sat down on a chair. Sweat dripped all over his body. He raised his glasses and rubbed the corner of his eyes with the sleeves of his dirty work clothes, wiping his face too. His long eyelashes were wet and stuck together like a man crying. His pale, thin skin oddly reacted sensitively to even the slightest stimulus. He wiped his face once again with the sleeves of his rough work clothes but felt a tingling sensation all over his face.



NOTE

This novel got removed from NovelUpdates. So...

I made a DISCORD SERVER. Just in case.


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