A Hazy Ending Perhaps a Beginning?

On a misty morning, a man in his twenties with short black hair, his sleeplessness of the past few days written on his face, was standing at a bus stop trying to light a cigarette from his pack. After some struggle, he finally managed, took a deep drag, and fixed his gaze on the seagulls flying overhead, once again sinking into his routine thoughts of where exactly his life had gone wrong.

He recalled his earliest memory: falling from the top bunk in a cold room filled with thirty children. Despite his crying, no one paid him any attention, and eventually he had to stop and take himself to the infirmary. They had told him his parents died in an accident when he was five. Since he ended up in an orphanage, it meant either he had no relatives or none willing to take him in. He could get along with the other children, but he was never close to anyone, growing up an introverted child. By the end of high school, he failed to enter university. As an adult, the orphanage could no longer keep him, and he was suddenly thrown into the cold, harsh arms of life.

He worked long hours at hard labor for little pay, and since he never complained, his bosses liked him. His silence was not out of contentment—it was because he had nothing else to do. No girlfriend, no friends, no family, no money. He worked himself to exhaustion so that when he wasn’t working, he would sleep almost all the time, afraid that if he paused even for a moment, he would be forced to remember just how lonely and empty he was.

Now, things weren’t quite as bad. Though still difficult, his current job was easier than the old ones, and sometimes he even went drinking with coworkers. Yet the emptiness inside him remained. Thinking it over again, he decided the problem had to be his family, right? If only he hadn’t lost them so young, things would have been different—or at least they could have left him something to make life easier.

Lost in thought, he was suddenly jolted back to reality by a woman’s scream.
“Kyaaaaah! Stop, please!!”

He had gotten on the bus and was standing. Everything seemed normal, but fear and panic marked the faces around him. The bus hit a bump, and he fell to the floor. That was when he realized they were going far too fast. Struggling to his feet, he was shocked.

They were no longer on the road. The bus was racing full speed along the coast.

He looked at the driver, whose eyes were wide open with a rigid, lifeless expression, as if attempting suicide and dragging them all along. He tried to stop the driver, but neither he nor others who tried could break through the glass shield of the driver’s cabin.

At full speed, the bus shot off the pier into the sea. As the man found himself suspended in the air, he shouted in terror:
“This isn’t right! Not like this!”

The bus crashed into the depths of the water. Darkness swallowed everything as screams filled the air. Someone shoved him, and his head struck an iron pole. As his consciousness faded, all he could see was darkness. He knew there was no one in the world who would grieve for him, yet still, even to his last moment, he felt the primal fear of death.

This was the end for him…

“Milord, it is morning, you must wake up now.”

Sunlight streamed in through a window. Squinting as he opened his eyes, the man awakened—inside a magnificent dream.