A restroom in a mixed-use building was filthy.
The mirror, at least, was still usable. Enough for the man to confirm his own foolishness.
“Endure. Endure. Endure. This is the time to endure.”
He muttered the words as if trying to hold on to his sanity.
In one of the rooms in that building, he was working.
It was a job that required telling skillful lies to people on the other side of the internet.
It was not illegal.
But it sat right at the edge of what was permissible, and it was certainly not something he could speak of with pride.
The man was in debt.
Unable to see a way to pay it off, he had once stood still near a station, when by chance he ran into an old friend.
Hearing his situation, the friend said, “If that’s the case, why don’t you do the same work I do?” and introduced him to the job.
The man had never really held a decent job.
To be precise, he had once—but he quit after a few months, saying it did not suit him.
He was not unintelligent.
Yet in another sense, he could be called a great fool.
He was always waiting for “someday”—waiting for a miracle.
To be fair, there were moments when something seemed about to happen.
But he could not withstand the gravity of reality, and his dreams had long since been crawling along the ground.
“But what lies beyond endurance…?” he wondered.
The pay was good.
If he could keep the job for a year, it would be enough to clear his debts.
By then, he no longer knew what sincerity meant.
And this time, he told his old friend a skillful lie as well—and quit the job.
The debt remained unpaid.
“If I must carry guilt,” he thought,
“it’s better not to be anonymous. At least, for my own sake.”
No miracle came to the man.
But the small trace of having made his own choice gradually grew, until it was enough to sever the habit of endlessly waiting for “someday” to arrive.