The scent of burnt coffee and floor cleaner hung in the air of the "Daily Grind" café, a smell Kain had grown to associate with survival. It was the smell of his only refuge. That was, until the bell above the door chimed with a vicious finality, and the air turned to ice.
Mr. Harrison, the area manager, stood in the doorway. He wasn't just a boss; he was a monument starched white shirt, a tie so tight it looked like it was strangling him, and eyes that could peel the paint off the walls. He didn't look at Kain. He looked through him, at the smudge on the steam wand, at the crookedly stacked pastries.
The staff, three girls with aprons tied in neat bows, froze mid-sentence. The cheerful Evening chatter died. All eyes darted to Kain, who was nervously wiping the counter with a rag that was more gray than white.
"Kain," Harrison's voice was a low rumble, like a garbage truck starting its engine.
"Good Evening, sir," Kain mumbled, not meeting his eyes.
That was all the invitation Harrison needed. He stepped forward, his polished shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. He didn't lower his voice. He wanted an audience.
"What the hell were you even thinking?" he boomed, his face twisting into a mask of pure disgust. He gestured wildly at the pristine café. "Two years! Two years you've been here, scrounging off the floor, and you haven't even learned the proper goddamn recipe for a flat white! You can't close up without leaving a disaster zone for the morning crew! How can you be this… this fool?"
Each word was a slap. Kain flinched. He could feel the heat rising to his face, the shame pricking at the back of his eyes. The three girls looked at their shoes, suddenly fascinated by the floor.
"I'm sorry, sir, I'm so sorry," Kain stammered, his voice small. He clasped his hands together, a desperate, praying gesture. "Please, give me one more chance. I'll do the best closing, I swear. I'll be so careful, I'll make sure to lessen the breakage of the cups, I'll stay late…"
He was rambling, the words tumbling out in a panicked flood. He didn't even realize he had started to sink, his knees bending until he was half-kneeling behind the counter, a position of utter supplication. He wasn't a barista; he was an intern, a shadow. He could never be promoted. He was barely a person.
Harrison just stared. The rage in his eyes seemed to flicker and die, replaced by something colder, more terrifying: a calm, collected decision. He took a long, slow breath, the kind you take before delivering a death sentence. He looked at the pathetic boy kneeling before him, a boy who had begged for this job, who had waited two months just for the chance to be exploited.
"Kain," he said, his voice now eerily quiet. The cruelty was in the calmness. "You're fired."
The words didn't make sense. They bounced off Kain like rubber bullets.
"I… I'm sorry, Boss?" Kain whispered, his eyes wide with incomprehension.
Harrison leaned down, getting close enough for Kain to smell the mint on his breath. He enunciated each word with surgical precision. "I said. You. Are. Terminated. I'm sorry. We can't have you."
The world tilted. Terminated. The word echoed in the cavern of his skull. This was it. This was the end of the line.
Kain's eyes, finally, welled up. He was a failure, the boy who couldn't get into university, the boy whose own parents had abandoned him like a stray dog. He had gotten this job by camping outside the manager's office for two months, a stubborn, starving ghost they finally hired just to make him go away.
The café wasn't just a job. It was his life support. The only reason he hadn't starved in the last two years was the expired sandwiches, the stale pastries, the burnt cookies he furtively stuffed in his pockets. Spoiled food didn't matter when you were hungry enough. Hunger had no understanding of expiration dates.
Now, that life was gone.
Harrison didn't wait for tears. He moved with a swift, brutal efficiency. He came around the counter, grabbed Kain by the collar of his thin, worn-out shirt, and dragged him through the café. Past the three girls, whose pitying eyes were glued to the floor. Past the customers who now looked at their phones with intense interest. He hauled him to the front door, the little bell chiming a mocking farewell as he threw him out onto the hard, cold pavement.
"You don't ever think about coming to this street again, Kain," Harrison growled, straightening his own tie. He didn't wait for a response. He turned his back and walked inside.
The door swung shut, the cheerful "Open" sign a lie. Through the glass, Kain could see his old colleagues. One, a girl named Sarah, looked at him for a split second. Her face was a portrait of pity, a fleeting emotion she couldn't afford to act on. Then she looked away, picking up a cloth to wipe the very counter he had just been cleaning.
Kain sat on the pavement, the cold seeping through his thin trousers. The world was a blur of passing feet and roaring traffic. The only life he had painstakingly, desperately built with his bare hands, had just been ripped away. He was alone, broke, and fired. He pulled his knees to his chest, not caring who saw, as the first tear finally escaped, tracing a clean line through the grime on his cheek. The city roared on, indifferent to the boy it had just swallowed whole.
The half-mile walk to his building was a blur of neon signs and indifferent faces. Kain's feet moved on autopilot, carrying him away from the only place that had ever felt like something close to safety. The city's night life was just beginning—laughter spilling from bars, couples walking hand in hand, the rumble of night buses—but Kain existed in a separate dimension, a silent film playing behind glass.
The building loomed ahead like a black tooth against the bruised purple sky. Four stories of crumbling brick, barred windows, and the constant hum of tension. The kind of place where police only came when someone screamed too loud for too long. The landlord had stopped caring about rent collection years ago; he just wanted bodies in the building to keep the squatters and gangs from burning it down completely.
Kain climbed the stairs, past the second-floor landing where two men in stained jackets sat smoking, their eyes tracking him with casual menace. He'd learned long ago to keep his head down, to move fast, to be invisible. Tonight, he didn't care if they saw him. Tonight, he was already nothing.
Room 307.
The door was cheap particle board with a lock that a child could break. He pushed it open and stood on the threshold, hit by the familiar stench of unwashed clothes, stale sweat, and the faint sourness of spoiled food. But tonight, it smelled different. It smelled like defeat.
He flicked the light switch. The single bare bulb flickered twice before buzzing to life, revealing the disaster he called home.
Clothes piled in corners like bodies after a battle. Empty instant noodle cups stacked into unstable towers on the windowsill. The small fridge stood open, empty except for a jar of pickles so old the liquid had turned brown. And there, against the far wall, sat his altar: a second-hand gaming setup. The monitor, cracked in one corner but still working. The keyboard, missing three keys. The mouse, held together with electrical tape. His entire paycheck, what little he got, had flowed into this machine. His escape pod. His coffin.
Sixteen hours straight some days. Longer on weekends. He would sit in this chair, in this stinking room, and disappear into worlds where he could be someone else. A warrior. A mage. A hero. Never a failure. Never abandoned. Never hungry.
But tonight, even the monitor seemed to mock him, its dark screen reflecting his own pathetic image—a thin boy with hollow cheeks and eyes that had finally run out of tears.
He walked to the bed, if you could call it that—a mattress on the floor with sheets that hadn't been washed in six months. He sat down heavily, the springs screaming in protest.
And then it hit him.
Not the sadness. Not the self-pity. Something deeper, darker. The absolute, crushing weight of nothing.
No job. No money. No food. No one who would miss him if he simply stopped existing. The café had been more than survival—it had been structure. A reason to wake up, to shower, to pretend he was part of the human race. Even stealing from the trash had given him purpose: survive one more day. Get to tomorrow.
But tomorrow was just another today. Another today with no reason.
His breath caught in his throat, then escaped as something between a sob and a howl.
"Why?"
The word tore out of him, raw and ugly. He didn't recognize his own voice.
"Why did this happen to me?"
He grabbed a pillow, soaking it with tears he couldn't control. His body shook with the force of two years of suppressed despair, all of it flooding out in this single, terrible moment.
"Why was I born poor? Why did you leave me? WHY?"
His eyes, blurred with tears, landed on the small table by the door. A single photograph in a cracked plastic frame. His father. Young, smiling, an arm around a much younger Kain. Before the drinking. Before the gambling. Before the night his father had simply... walked out. No note. No explanation. Just gone, leaving behind a mountain of debt and a seven-year-old boy who spent the next six months waiting by the window.
Kain lunged for the photo, snatching it up with trembling hands. He stared at that smiling face—the face of the man who had destroyed everything. Who had broken his mother's spirit until she, too, eventually disappeared into the system. Who had left Kain to foster homes, to group homes, to the streets, to this rotting room with its broken monitor and empty fridge.
"You," Kain whispered, his voice cracking. Then louder: "YOU!"
He wanted to tear the photo. Burn it. Throw it out the window. But his fingers wouldn't close. They just held it, trembling, as more tears fell onto the glass.
"You made this," he sobbed. "You let the world go dark."
He collapsed back onto the mattress, the photo pressed against his chest, his body curling into a fetal position. The room's single bulb continued its faint buzzing, indifferent to the boy beneath it. From downstairs, the thump of music. From the hallway, a woman's angry voice. From the street, a siren.
The city sang its nightly song of chaos, and Kain lay in the middle of it, utterly alone, holding a photograph of the man who had taught him that love was just another word for leaving.
His eyes stayed open for a long time, staring at the cracked ceiling, watching the shadows dance. Eventually, exhaustion took him—not the gentle sleep of rest, but the heavy unconsciousness of a body that had finally given up. He didn't dream. He couldn't. Dreams required hope, and hope had just been fired, dragged out by its collar, and thrown onto the cold pavement of reality.
The night deepened around Room 307, and somewhere in the darkness, a boy who had never been given a chance lay sleeping, holding onto the only thing he had left: a photograph of the man who had taken everything else.