Work Text:
Reigen smoked on the walk through the busy parking lot all the way home. He hadn’t touched a car in what felt like a decade, and hadn’t owned one in even longer.
His two weeks were finally up, and he could now be done with that monotonous fake-happy telemarketer script. “Hello! This is *insert company name* calling you to wonder if you would be interested in *insert product*. What is your name, *insert honorific*?”
He thought he’d be relieved it was finally over.
He was so tired of being a faceless, nameless voice on the other end of the phone that people would just immediately hang up on or take their anger out on. He was tired of having no passion for the job, tired of coworkers trying to one up him for status among themselves, tired of being overworked and underpaid, tired of the same grey bland routine, tired of being so damn tired.
‘Hey, at least I wasn’t in the customer service department, those poor bastards got the brunt of the attack.’ He thought to himself. ‘I swear they looked more and more like weird ghouls every day just from the stress of it.’
He kicked a rock on the sidewalk leading up to his apartment building, watching it bounce until it hit the wall and rolled to a dead stop. He wondered how many times it’d been kicked in the same spot before.
He climbed up his few flights of stairs to get to his room, taking his time for no particular reason.
Reigen unlocked his door and was met with the familiar stench of burnt coffee and cigarette smoke. He flipped his light switch and the bare ceiling bulb struggled until finally settled on a dim and yellow glow. It’s a wonder how the thing hadn’t burnt out yet, it’d started to fade and flicker a long time ago.
Setting his briefcase down by the door and taking his shoes off, he took the only seat at his table. It creaked and groaned under his weight. Maybe it was time for a new chair, too.
He took one last puff of his cigarette then stubbed it out on the small abused plate on his kitchen table. He was all out of them now. He’d already run out of shampoo too, and eggs.
‘What am I going to do now?’
That was the only thing he could think of now that he’d gotten back to his apartment. What now, what now?
He couldn’t go into anything that needed higher education qualifications, it’s far too late for him to try his hand at university… not that he had the finances to even support that in the first place. Maybe in the meantime he could work at some crappy retail store and try to sell clothes or food, until he got his thoughts in order.
But still, if he did go into one of those kind of jobs, he’d still have shitty coworkers, still have to work for someone, still be overwhelmed with the monotony.
‘Why did I quit before I even had a plan? Why didn’t I think about this when I knew I’d be leaving in a couple weeks? Why did I leave it for just now to think about?’
He thought quitting would make him feel relieved, but it only brought more stress.
He needed another cigarette, and even opened up the flimsy box in the hopes that maybe there was one left and he’d mistaken it for being empty when he pulled out the last one he smoked. But he hadn’t been mistaken then and was met with disappointment.
This disappointment had been growing in him for so long; so, so long.
Disappointment in his job, his life, his gloomy apartment, his shitty old coffeemaker that burnt everything no matter how long it was on, the fucking lightbulb that kept on flickering and made an annoying and constant buzzing sound, himself.
It all boiled up in that moment and turned into anger. Weak, pathetic anger. Reigen crushed the cigarette box and whipped it at the far wall, just for it to lightly hit the wall and fall into the pot of his houseplant, barely making a sound.
“Fucking— Gahh!”
He shoved himself up from the table, his chair complaining loudly as it scraped the floor and fell as he stood and stalked over to the plant. He wanted to break something, he wanted it to be loud, he wanted it to be heard.
He wound up his leg and was about to kick the pot before looking down at the plant and pausing.
He got this plant at the supermarket. It was for sale, probably half the leaves were dead and it was dropped dramatically. It was a spur of the moment buy, really. He didn’t even know what kind of plant it was (and still doesn’t). He felt a little bad for it, and had the feeling it was going to be discarded within the next few days. When he took it home, he took better care of it than he did himself for the first month or two of having it.
It was nice to care for something.
And at that moment he knew he didn’t have the heart to destroy it, not after he’d nurtured it back to (semi-)health. That would be such a huge betrayal, not only to the plant but his past self. Not that his past self was any different or better than his present self. He just didn’t want to be let down again, even if that meant letting himself down.
He took a deep breath and brought his leg back. He relaxed his shoulders, which were bunched up almost to his ears in anticipation of the impact.
Reigen stooped down and grabbed the crushed box that had been waiting patiently in the soil. Gently tossing it into the garbage can, he picked his chair up from off the ground and sat down, taking another deep breath. He tipped his head back, brushing a hand through his coarse, greasy hair.
He sighed.
He’d get more shampoo tomorrow.