If Everyone was Like You, the World Would be a Little Better

"Aah!" I whirl around in fright, juggling my cell phone between both of my hands, to see a very obnoxious-looking guy with long, dyed blonde hair and an obviously fake tan.

"Why ya so scared? I'm not a ghost." My pickup artist-looking coworker takes a long, slender white cigarette out of a pack in his hand and starts to light it up. I instinctively gag a little at the smell. I have a weak stomach- even the smell of smoke on someone makes me feel sick.

"No, I'm not scared...you just surprised me..."

That's Miyata, yet another coworker of mine. He's everything I'm not- flashy, talkative, and absolutely obnoxious. I don't think there's a coworker that I get along with- at best, I'll tolerate the high schoolers who work for a few months for extra spending money, but the full-time employees are some of the worst people I've ever met. Nakaumi is a trashy gyaru who barely does any work, Miyata is a player who tries to chat up female customers instead of doing his job, and the manager has zero leadership ability.

Why don't I work at another konbini? Because I don't have a car, obviously. This is the only store within walking distance of my house that's hiring.

Miyata exhales, releasing a cloud of fumes that I try to gingerly scoot away from. It doesn't work. That smell seeps into everything.

"So, were you texting your girlfriend or something?"

"No..." I quickly look away, hoping he didn't catch a glimpse of my LIME messages. "It's no one important."

"Come on, you can tell me. You got a girlfriend?"

If I had nothing to lose, I would get up in this guy's orange face and scream NO, I DON'T HAVE A GIRLFRIEND BECAUSE I HAVE NO MONEY AND THAT'S WHY I HAVE TO WORK AT THIS SHITTY KYOUDAI MART FOR MINIMUM WAGE WITH DQNS LIKE YOU AND NAKAUMI...but I don't have the courage to do that. I never will. So instead, I turn my head away and mumble, "No. Why do you care?"

"Because I'm trying to talk to you, man." He takes another puff of his cancer stick. "It's way too awkward when you're doing that doom-and-gloom act. We've been coworkers for what, a year now?"

I don't want you to talk to me, dude. Only a normie with one brain cell in his head couldn't figure that out. I thought I would be able to spend a few minutes chatting with Kurokami and here comes this guy to screw it all up.

"Look, man, I get it, this place sucks. It's why we're out here and not in there." Miyata shrugs his shoulders, leaning along the back wall of the convenience store as I crouch down near the trash bags. "You need a girlfriend, bro. You get lonely? Life sucks? Work sucks? You got a girl. It makes it all worth it. Look, this is Rimi-"

Suddenly, a bright phone screen with a picture of a woman with about 30 gallons of makeup on is shoved into my face. I don't know how on earth anyone could find that attractive.

"-She's my new girl. She was one of Ayaka's friends and I met her when I was dating Ayaka and then because she decided to be a total bitch and take our baby and go back to her parents I started dating Rimi instead. She's way better than Ayaka. Every chick I date ends up wanting child support eventually. I swear I got kids all over the country. Just the other day this lady-"

I'm praying that the manager will come out and cut Miyata's 20-minute smoke break short, but it doesn't happen. The minutes tick by while he rambles about some nauseating stuff and I have to pretend to care. I wanted to use this time to talk to Kurokami about my novel...but it looks like that's not happening.

30 minutes tick by, and by the end of it I've learned all sorts of details about Miyata's personal life that I really didn't want to. I don't care that he's dated five women and had children with more than one of them, and I definitely don't care about the fine points of which one was the best at various bedroom activities (which he describes in excruciating detail). I, for the life of me, can't understand people like him. He's out here making as much money as me, and I'm struggling to survive, and yet he's paying child support to multiple women? How does he live? And yet he seems...happy about it. Content.

...I don't want to admit it, but there's a tiny part of me that's jealous of him.

I should have been well on my way to starting my own family by now. There was this girl at my college who went to high school with a guy from my art circle and we met at a mixer. She was a solid C+, nothing special, no hobbies except D*sney and sleeping, but she was really into me. Or at least that's what my friends said. I could never figure it out on my own.

I never had a girlfriend in high school. I was too busy cramming for tests. So I loved the attention, even if I was too shy to figure out that she liked me on my own. We had gone on a couple of group outings and she always wanted to be around me, so I was going to confess to her...and then everything happened.

If that black ice didn't form on that one place on that one country road, maybe I'd be halfway to being married. But I'll never have a girlfriend at this rate. I'm too busy trying to not starve or freeze to death in this dreary city where the skies are always gray.

...Is this sour grapes? Duh. Of course it's sour grapes.

My trashy coworker, despite all his missteps, is living a happier life than me, and I'm so lonely I'm looking forward to LIME messages from some guy on the internet as the highlight of my day.

In the end, Miyata never went back inside before my 30 minutes were up. I hope Kurokami didn't think it was rude that I suddenly stopped replying when we were in the middle of a chat. Normies ruin everything.

The rest of my shift went as usual- I was the only guy there who was actually working. Then, I took the usual path back home to my closet- walking as quickly as possible to try to avoid the autumn chill through my thin jacket. It didn't work. I shivered the whole way home.

The kerosene heater's still broken, and my apartment's still a dump. But somehow, the sight of my old laptop where I left it, and knowing that my rough draft is on it gives me some comfort. When I open up my laptop, the adventures of Alfred, the former Royal Paladin who gets unexpectedly killed and reincarnated into the body of the ruler of the demons, will be right where they were when I left it, ready to continue.

Time to push on. One more chapter tonight.

I'm unexpectedly stopped by my phone buzzing. It's a LIME. There's only one person who that could be from.

@KurokamiSeigo: Rayfar...is your pen name taken from Elves Chronicle? Lol

@rayfar_horizon: Yeah. Huge fan

@rayfar_horizon: I read the whole manga when I was a kid. I would buy copies of Janp and then throw them out after I read Elves Chronicle

@rayfar_horizon: I wasted so much money lol

@KurokamiSeigo: Lol me too I loved Elves Chronicle. I had an Elves Chronicle pencil case and posters and character song CDs and everything

@KurokamiSeigo: You're probably around the same age as me, right? I'm going to college next year

@KurokamiSeigo: I feel like reading Elves Chronicle as a kid is a zoomer experience

@KurokamiSeigo: I was too young for Wyvern Ball

@KurokamiSeigo: Lol

@rayfar_horizon: Yeah I'm a little older than you I guess but not by much

@KurokamiSeigo: Wow

@KurokamiSeigo: A fellow old head

@rayfar_horizon: ???

@KurokamiSeigo: Most ppl on N*rou are kids and I found that out the hard way

@KurokamiSeigo: 18 is old for N*rou

@KurokamiSeigo: They're the only ones who have enough free time to write lol

@rayfar_horizon: Makes sense

@KurokamiSeigo: Who was your favorite Elves Chronicle character? I bet I get this one right (ᗒᗨᗕ)

@rayfar_horizon: Take a wild guess

@KurokamiSeigo: I'm kinda iffy on Rayfar

@KurokamiSeigo: He was a bit too shouty dumb shonen protagonist for my tastes

@rayfar_horizon: He wasn't the main character though and he was really cool

@rayfar_horizon: His sword swarm technique went so hard

@KurokamiSeigo: My favorite character was Caelym

@rayfar_horizon: Oof

@rayfar_horizon: I didn't like him. He was really whiny

@KurokamiSeigo: I liked his backstory though. And he was handsome ┐(￣ヘ￣)┌

@rayfar_horizon: ...

@rayfar_horizon: That's why you liked him?

@rayfar_horizon: That's kinda weird...aren't you a guy?

@KurokamiSeigo: Maybe I'm not

@KurokamiSeigo: JK there are no girls on the internet

@rayfar_horizon: Those emoticons you post are pretty girly dude

@KurokamiSeigo: I'm expressing myself

@KurokamiSeigo: If you hate them that much, find someone else to proofread your novel

@rayfar_horizon: I didn't mean it that way!!!!!!

@KurokamiSeigo: Lol I was kidding

@KurokamiSeigo: How far have you gotten on chapter 9 btw?

@rayfar_horizon: three words

@KurokamiSeigo: Ok I'll leave you alone then. Sorry for bothering you when you were trying to write

@rayfar_horizon: No it's ok

@rayfar_horizon: I like talking to you

@KurokamiSeigo: Looking forward to chapter 9

@KurokamiSeigo: Tty tomorrow

@rayfar_horizon: Bye

@KurokamiSeigo is offline.

In the blink of an eye, it's 11:21 PM, and my rough draft has three thousand more words. I don't even remember much of writing Chapter 9. It was a blur.

Kurokami is a really nice guy. We might end up being friends if we knew each other in real life. I know it's small, but talking to him doesn't make me feel completely hopeless about my life.

For the first time in months, I went to bed looking forward to tomorrow.