The World Does Not Wait
1221 Words
Lucian learned that adulthood did not arrive all at once.
It crept in through small humiliations.
Through forms that asked for emergency contacts.
Through employers who wanted proof of experience but offered none in return.
Through mornings when he woke already tired.
The café job lasted three months.
Three months of standing on aching feet. Of memorizing orders. Of apologizing for mistakes that weren’t his. Of smiling until his jaw hurt.
He saved what he could.
It was never much.
Rent took most of it. Transport took the rest. Food was whatever remained.
Some nights he ate instant noodles. Some nights bread. On bad weeks, tea was dinner.
He learned how long the body could go before weakness became dangerous.
He learned how to ignore the hollow feeling in his stomach.
The café manager began scheduling him for double shifts.
“You’re reliable,” she said.
Lucian nodded.
Reliable meant expendable.
The kitchen staff joked loudly during breaks. They talked about weekend plans and cousins getting married and mothers who sent food home in plastic containers.
Lucian listened while wiping counters.
Once, a girl named Rina offered him half her sandwich.
“You barely eat,” she said.
Lucian shook his head.
“I’m fine.”
She frowned.
“You don’t have to pretend.”
He smiled politely and returned to work.
He always pretended.
⸻
The café closed without warning.
One morning Lucian arrived to find a handwritten notice taped to the door.
Closed indefinitely.
No explanation.
No severance.
No apology.
He stood there longer than necessary, reading the same words again and again.
Then he turned and walked away.
He didn’t tell his roommates.
He left early each morning anyway, pretending nothing had changed.
Instead, he walked the city.
He filled out applications in libraries and internet cafés. He stood in lines that led nowhere. He memorized new lies.
He added skills to his résumé that he could learn quickly.
He extended timelines.
He erased Havensport completely.
On one form, under Next of kin, he wrote Jonah’s name.
Jonah didn’t know.
Lucian told himself it didn’t matter.
Everyone did this.
Everyone bent the truth.
He was just learning how.
⸻
He took a job at a car wash.
The supervisor paid late and deducted money for mistakes without explanation.
Lucian scrubbed tires until his knuckles cracked. He inhaled chemical fumes until his head ached.
When he asked about missing wages, the supervisor laughed.
“You want this job or not?”
Lucian nodded.
“Yes.”
He always said yes.
He learned how to swallow frustration.
He learned how to keep his face neutral when customers tossed coins at his feet instead of into his hand.
He learned how to pretend insults were wind.
At night, he lay on his mattress and counted money in his head, planning meals, calculating transport, estimating how long he could survive if the job disappeared tomorrow.
He stopped buying fruit.
He stopped buying soap regularly.
He stretched toothpaste.
He began showering at work.
This was not tragedy.
This was adjustment.
⸻
One afternoon, while wiping down a sedan, Lucian noticed a man inside the car laughing with a woman beside him.
A child’s voice drifted from the back seat.
The boy pressed his face to the window, watching Lucian with open curiosity.
Lucian met his gaze briefly.
Then he looked away.
Later, on his break, he sat on a low concrete wall eating dry bread.
Two coworkers stood nearby talking about their families.
“My daughter starts school next week,” one said proudly.
“Already?” the other laughed. “Time moves too fast.”
Lucian chewed slowly.
He imagined what it would feel like to have someone waiting for him somewhere.
Not urgently.
Not desperately.
Just consistently.
The thought made his chest ache.
He stood up before they noticed his silence.
⸻
He began avoiding conversations that drifted toward personal lives.
When coworkers asked where he was from, he kept answers short.
When they asked about parents, he redirected.
He did not like the pause that followed honesty.
He did not like the way people’s eyes changed.
He preferred to be ordinary.
Invisible.
At night, he sometimes scrolled through his phone looking at pictures of strangers celebrating birthdays, weddings, graduations.
He told himself he wasn’t jealous.
He was observing.
He had learned early that wanting too much made survival harder.
⸻
Lucian picked up temporary shifts wherever he could.
Security guard.
Warehouse assistant.
Delivery helper.
Each job introduced new rules and new faces and new ways to be replaceable.
He learned which employers paid on time.
He learned which ones disappeared.
He learned how to recognize empty promises by tone alone.
He learned that contracts protected companies, not people.
Once, after a fourteen-hour shift, he fell asleep on a bus and missed his stop.
He woke near dawn in an unfamiliar part of the city.
He walked home in silence, watching stray dogs search for food among trash piles.
He thought, briefly, that they were more honest about survival than people.
They did not pretend.
⸻
The loneliness arrived quietly.
Not as dramatic sorrow.
As absence.
There was no one to tell small victories to.
No one to complain to when things went wrong.
No one who noticed when he grew thinner.
He tried dating once.
A woman from the car wash smiled at him and suggested coffee.
They sat across from each other in a crowded shop.
She talked about her siblings and her childhood neighborhood.
Lucian nodded.
She asked about his family.
He hesitated.
“I don’t really have one,” he said.
Her smile faltered.
“Oh.”
The rest of the conversation felt forced.
They did not meet again.
Lucian told himself it was mutual.
But later, lying alone in his room, he acknowledged the truth.
He had closed himself before she could.
It felt safer that way.
⸻
He skipped meals more often.
Not always because of money.
Sometimes because he forgot.
Sometimes because hunger felt easier than disappointment.
He lost weight.
His clothes hung loosely.
His eyes grew sharper.
People at work described him as quiet.
Efficient.
Focused.
No one asked if he was okay.
He had learned long ago that being functional mattered more than being well.
⸻
One evening, after being shorted on pay for the third time in a month, Lucian stood outside the car wash staring at the traffic.
He considered walking into it.
Not to die.
Just to feel something decisive.
The thought startled him.
He stepped back immediately.
He pressed his hands together and breathed until the feeling passed.
He remembered Mira crying.
He remembered Anya’s empty bed.
He remembered the orphanage ceiling.
He did not have the luxury of collapse.
⸻
That night, he wrote in his notebook for the first time in weeks.
They say adulthood is freedom.
But freedom without safety feels like floating in deep water.
You can move.
But you never stop swimming.
He closed the book.
Outside, the city continued its noise without noticing him.
The world did not slow down for exhaustion.
It did not pause for grief.
It did not reward endurance.
It rewarded stability.
And Lucian was learning, slowly and painfully, that resilience was only useful if it led somewhere solid.
Otherwise, it was just another way to stay alive.
- Writer
