First chapter

With a mind filled with confusion, the young man checked his calendar, the fireworks outside were still lighting up the dark clouds with their colorful smoke and laughter from the gleeful children. As a lonely soul trapped in his home on New Year's Eve . He silently tore the old calendar and picked up a new one for the upcoming boring year.

He knew that as so, since he had gotten sick of his inner motivation that always chanted for him annually, saying "new year new me", yet he knew it would be the same as always.

Throwing the calendar in the trash, he picked up a brand new calendar with waterproof paper and prepared to hang it. With a shoe in one hand and a nail in the other, he did the unthinkable. He drove the nail through the wall, knowing he won't get his insurance deposit again. This however didn't phase him, but rather he turned on the screen, to watch the ball drop. As he marveled with incredulity, he questioned whether he would be willing to travel to the busy city of New York and wear a stupid purple hat just to stand in the outside cold. A resounding yes came to mind, with a condition that he travel with a girlfriend side by side.

However that went out of his mind, as his network started to slow down. Wondering why, he checked the time and saw only one minute was remaining. He tried to flip channels but to no hope. He switched to the Miley and Dolly Parton, but the network started to freeze up again. Switching back to his first channel, he found the connection recovering but alas, it was just coupled kissing and confetti flying in the air. He dishearteningly realized he had missed it. With nothing else in mind, he switched off the tv and went to sleep.

The next morning, he woke up to check his phone, and as usual, the only thing there was notifications from his liked comments and a few group chats, none of which fulfilled him socially. He did what he did best in the moment, he set an alarm for an hour and covered his head again. Even though he had decided to visit the gym early today and start on his new workout routine, the urge to escape the cold was ten times stronger and won against last night's convictions.

He uncovered his head again, and texted the most uninteresting and generic words he could think of, before returning to sleep. He grinned as he thought of the pure rage his friends will get when they read,"I haven't seen you since last year". This small excitement kept his brain active, and more and more random thoughts formed in his head. Right when he decided it was time to enjoy the bed more, the blaring alarm on his phone went off, almost scaring him to death.

One never knows how fast karma strikes back, and now he had no choice but to wake up and clean up the house and himself. His right arm, feeling bloodless sneaked beneath his pillow to feel his wire, fingers followed the wire tiredly and felt his earphones, unplugging them at the moment. He first reminisced about his incomplete dream. One had fought all energy to finish up and failed.

Habitually, he just visited YouTube, and seeing nothing new, he also visited Webnovel to sign in for free coins, before gaining enough willpower to reply to his messages. Except for a few lols in the group chat and the usual guys flirting with the single woman in the group, nothing else seemed that important. Therefore he played some trending music in his earpiece and got up to clean the house while bobbing his head.

He had acquired this habit ever since he moved out of his parent's house, since he knew it would be impossible for him to be able to clean the house while tired from work and college. He always thanked his ancestors that he wasn't an introvert like the rest of his family, otherwise he would have inherited their procrastination.

Despite his failing mental health, he knew that some habits should never be broken, otherwise the rabbit hole will be endlessly deep and worse than falling into an abyss, so he took extra care of his social and physical health to the best of his physical ability, despite the constant small defeats with his bouts of loneliness and depression. His years of reading self help and deep dive into axiology and epistemology strengthened his mind against the craziness of the world and his sapience.

Snapping out of his thoughts , he found out he had finished cleaning everything he had to, like time had moved forward without him thinking. He paid this no heed as instead the cramping of his fingers made him pause for a bit and go to clean himself up. After a shower, he found some missed calls from his friend Luke. Calling back, he heard a groggy voice asking him where he was last night. Hearing silence, the voice on the other side knew what was going on and broke into a soft chuckle.

"Your car broke down again, didn't it, haha"

"You know my piece of junk is cursed man, it always fails at important times"

"That's what she said.", and then Luke broke into a louder laughter. As soon as both sides quietened down, Luke spoke up again

"So will you be picking me up, or should I get an Uber?"

"No, it's alright. Pick you up at 10, alright."

With that, the young man hang up and went to eat something. Despite knowing damn well his fridge was empty, he opened it with a silent hope that the gods might have magically somehow added in food, or some leftovers were there. He quietly approached his fridge and slowly pried it open, and just as he'd suspected. It was as empty as when he first moved into the apartment. Despite this, he didn't lose hope, and decided to check the freezer. Luckily this time, he found….nothing too, unless blocks of square ice count.

He grabbed a wallet,keys and an extra jacket before driving to his favorite store. On the way, as luck would have it, a train light came on and a buffer stop slowly lowered, blocking all traffic. His frustration suddenly went up a notch as he saw the slightly glowing train start to honk, he tried to rise the window of his car as he was starting to get a bit chilly, but his eyes glazed over for a bit. The cold brought him back to his senses and weirdly enough, he felt ridiculously even more cold than a second ago. He paid no further thought but his fingers also felt cramped from the cold.

He tried to press the window button to rise the windows but he looked forward to see a ridiculous scene. The buffet stop was rising up and the train was already a few feet past the stop. Inwardly, he shook his head at his failing attention span and tried to convey this to the vehicle on his right, but he saw confusion in his eyes too. Looking in the rear mirror at the lady in the car behind, he found the same glazed over look.

Realizing the strangeness of the situation, he quietly turned back to the front of the car and drove, putting all that ridiculousness past him.

Coming back home, he prepared a quick breakfast and went to pick up his friend Luke. With a knock, he heard someone ask who it was.

"Luke, I am your father."

"Yeah yeah, you and your boring jokes, cmon let's go."and with that, Luke dragged his by the hand out of the door. Wondering as to why Luke is suddenly hands on. A shout was heard in the building Luke just came from and with that, both he and Luke ran as fast as they can towards the car while laughing.

"You're childish as hell, Luke"

In a fit of laughter, the image of Drake with a dick drawn on his forehead and a huge 21. Made his shake his head at his childishness. Luke then told him to stop by work while they both pick up last night's leftovers from the work party. Feeling skeevy, he tried to back out of the deal but his almost empty stomach told him otherwise. Arriving at Extron Electronics traffic office, the security checked both their badges and let them in. They both took and elevator while chatting about how they came to work on an off day just because they're broke, complaining while knowing damn well they make enough to not need to scavenge at work.

Walking into the control center, they saw their colleague looking at the underground subway cameras and playing simultaneously on his laptop.

"Luke, and dude. What are you doing here?"

"Oh nothing, we just got bored. What's up?"

Luke went off to chat with the the colleague near the fox box after signaling to Luke's friend to watch the CCTV for him for a bit. With that, the young man sat him the monitoring chair and observed around for a bit, occasionally switching between different cameras and noting down time stamps.

At that moment, a camera suddenly showed a train coming to a stop, and a young man stepped first out of the train, followed by a devastatingly beautiful woman. She was so beautiful it was uncanny, and he felt fear instead. All his attention had been drawn to that specific camera angle, and it weirded him out how other passengers seemed to ignore it completely. Thinking his mind was failing him, he then saw the woman who got off with the young man suddenly take a step forward, grab the man's shoulder, and push him into the ground.

It wasn't just throwing him or anything, but rather the young man's outstretched arm as he slowly sank into the concrete like quicksand made him speechless, his hair stood up and he saw that soft hand wave at the surrounding, then slowly turn towards the camera, seemingly making eye contact with himself.

His arms, though feeble, clenched his armrest, his vision started to blur, he fell back out his chair and crossed his arms in a fighting pose. That's when the fear started to envelope him, like an ancient abyss from the 7th hell