Another morning bled into thousands of previous ones. The dense, humid air pressed down on his shoulders as the crowd at the bus stop shifted from foot to foot under a drizzling rain. People hid their faces in the collars of their jackets, sheltered under umbrellas, merging into a single, faceless stream. He stood beneath a yellowed plastic shelter, blending perfectly into the scene. Worn jeans, a dark hoodie, light hair falling into his eyes. He wasn't waiting for transport — he was simply positioned at the point where it was scheduled to stop.
With a hiss of pneumatics, a rattling bus pulled up to the curb. The doors strained apart, letting dampness and the smell of wet clothes into the cabin. He stepped onto the platform. Tapped his plastic card against the validator.
Beep.
The short, sharp sound struck his ears, wrenching him out of reality for a split second.
"Huh?" The sound of his own voice felt foreign to him.
"Try to soften your expression," the woman on the other side of the desk said, her fingers nervously interlacing.
He blinked, focusing on the office.
"Why me?" The words slipped from his lips on their own. There was something rare in them — an almost forgotten thirst for a real, non-scripted answer.
The woman's cheek twitched. Her features sharpened, and she pointed a finger directly at him.
"That's exactly why."
He knitted his brows in confusion. His boss exhaled heavily and rubbed the bridge of her nose, visibly trying to gather her thoughts.
"Listen, [***]..." she said his name, but it came out strained. "I don't want to offend you in any way, but let's be honest. If someone doesn't know you personally, you come across as an extremely unpleasant person. People react very negatively to your gaze."
As she said it, she was looking at the best proof of her words. Usually, when employees are fired, they get angry, indignant — some shed tears, others are relieved or react with understanding. But the person in front of her simply watched. And that gaze made her want to look away as quickly as possible. Even after two years of working together, she rarely dared to look him in the face, fearing somewhere deep down that he might snap at any second and lunge at her.
He silently lowered his head, studying the pattern on the linoleum.
"I see."
She swallowed nervously and hastened to finish her thought:
"Since the other person was the initiator in the current conflict, you are eligible for compensation. The documents are already prepared."
Hearing this, he raised his head again. A strained, crooked smile appeared on his lips.
"Thank you."
The woman shivered. He was looking straight at her, but she didn't feel that gaze on herself. His bored, empty eyes seemed to pierce right through her, fastening onto something far behind her back.
Beep.
The sound of the validator from the passenger behind him returned him to the rattling bus cabin.
He walked down the aisle, ignoring the old woman with a book and the dozing worker, and sank into an empty seat by a grime-smeared window. He pulled his hood over his head, put earbuds in.
"So that's what she thought of me," the thought drifted lazily by, without much resentment.
He dropped his gaze to the dark screen of the smartphone in his hand. The black glass reflected his face. Was it sad right now? Sorrowful? Hell if he knew. He'd already forgotten himself how to use facial expressions without constant control. Every social situation, every new conversation partner demanded its own specific countenance. He had to assemble them piece by piece, like a construction set. And without that control... he wondered what it was even supposed to look like in its natural state.
"How tiresome," he concluded, abandoning any attempt to find an answer in his own reflection.
How many times had he already gone through this cycle? Job search, adaptation, dismissal. Was it even possible to find meaning in this endless loop? Unlikely. What number profession was this? What hadn't he tried yet? Had he found even a single thing that tugged at the strings inside, that sparked genuine interest? Nope. Nothing of the sort. Just sheer, ceaseless disappointment — in the people around him and in whatever scraps remained of himself.
Time flowed. Or stood still. Behind closed eyelids there was nothing but darkness, and in his ears — only the memorised rhythm of music. He had almost slipped into his habitual state of semi-oblivion when a distant, muffled sound broke through the bass.
A scream. Piercing, filled with animal terror.
He didn't have time to register it, didn't even have time to feel fear. Only instinctively, for a fraction of a second, he opened his eyes.
The world beyond the glass lost its contours, blurring into a single smear. The enormous grille of an oncoming truck inexorably approached, filling the entire window, blotting out reality. The screech of crumpling metal merged with a flash of pain, which instantly cut off into absolute darkness.
He didn't come to right away. Waking felt like a slow surfacing from a bottomless, viscous depth. There was no pain, no memories of the crash. There was nothing. Just the awareness of his own existence. He opened his eyes, but all around was only an infinite, blinding whiteness.
He was sitting. A figure devoid of clear outlines, a nearly transparent silhouette woven from nothing. Beneath him was sand. White, fine as salt, it stretched in all directions to the very horizon, merging with an equally white, empty sky. But the sky was not empty. High above, where the stratosphere should have been, a gigantic, living web crept across the white dome. Violet lightning, silent and cold, raced ceaselessly along it, intertwining into a complex, ever-shifting pattern — like the colossal nervous system of the universe.
And there, far beyond the horizon, darkness yawned. An enormous, perfect black hole with a thin, blindingly white outline. It didn't just hang in space — it lived. It seemed to be drawing in the very fabric of this world: the white sand slowly, almost imperceptibly, streamed toward it, and the violet lightning in the sky bent and arched toward its insatiable maw.
The figure sat motionless. Inside was as empty as this world. There was no fear, no surprise, no curiosity. Only an incredible, all-consuming lethargy. No desire to move. No desire to think. No desire even to exist. Just to sit and watch as the black hole slowly devoured this world, and then him along with it.
Time passed. How much? A second? An eternity? Here it didn't matter. The figure did not stir, immersed in an eternal half-slumber. The landscape did not change; only the violet lightning continued its soundless dance in the sky. But something had changed nonetheless. The black hole on the horizon had drawn closer. Only slightly, but its white outline had grown sharper, its pull more tangible. The figure noted this listlessly, without any emotion. Just a fact.
Another skip of time, perhaps millennia long. The hole had grown noticeably larger. It was no longer just a point on the horizon. It had become the dominant feature of the landscape — an enormous black sun devouring the light. The figure, still sitting motionless on the white sand, began to notice how space itself was distorting around it, stretching toward the giant. In its thoughts, slow and viscous as tar, a shadow of awareness flickered.
"So that's how it is..."
Simple, emotionless acceptance. He didn't know what it was — death, a transition, oblivion. He simply understood that sooner or later he would be pulled into this wormhole, and he would vanish. And it seemed... right. The logical conclusion to his meaningless existence.
Another eternity passed. Now even the landscape began to change under the gravitational force. The white sand around the figure rose in small whirlwinds, rushing toward the horizon. The web of violet lightning above crackled and bent as if it were a string stretched to its limit. The hole was so close now that its white outline blinded the eyes, and the blackness at its center seemed absolute. And in that moment, a barely noticeable tremor appeared on the figure — on its spectral, immaterial surface.
The soul thought it was ready. That it was tired. That it wanted to vanish. But something within, a tiny, nearly extinguished spark — the instinct embedded in the foundation of all living things — still resisted. It was not a conscious desire to live. It was a primal, animal terror before complete, final oblivion. The trembling intensified. It was the agony of a choice that the soul did not even realize it was making. Surrender and be consumed? Or...
And at some point, obeying this last, desperate impulse, the figure slowly, with immense effort, turned away from the wormhole. It looked in the opposite direction, into the infinite white void. And gradually, it began to move.
A long time later, the soul was still moving through the expanse. Now its movements were more jerky, erratic. It was tired. Tired as it had never been in its past, physical life. This was not muscular fatigue. This was the exhaustion of the will itself. Every movement was accompanied by invisible spasms; every effort to take a step through the viscous white sand echoed with pain in its very essence. It wanted to stop. Wanted to surrender. To lie down on this sand and let the pull of the black hole, still looming behind, do its work. But something — that same tiny spark, that same irrational terror — drove it forward, refusing to let it stop.
It walked, stumbling, falling, getting up. It walked until it felt it could go no further. That the next step would be the last. That it would simply... dissipate from exhaustion. And at that very moment, when it was ready to give up, it noticed it.
Ahead, in the perfectly flat white sand, there was something foreign. A hatch. It led downward. The hatch itself was made of a strange, pearlescent wood; its surface shimmered with a soft, iridescent light, contrasting with the blinding whiteness around it. The sand seemed to flow around it, not daring to touch it, as if the hatch existed in another reality, merely touching this one.
The soul stopped, staring at it. What was it? A trap? Salvation? Another illusion of this mad world? After brief deliberation, which came down to a single, simple thought — "it can't get any worse" — it approached and, gathering its last strength, opened the heavy lid. Darkness led downward. Not the menacing blackness of the hole, but simply... an absence of light. Taking a final step, the soul entered the hatch.
It found itself in another space. Absolutely white, yet entirely different. It was an office. The walls, the floor, the ceiling — everything seemed carved from a single block of immaculate white marble, smooth and cold. In the middle of the room stood an equally white marble desk, and behind it, in an elegant white armchair, sat a man.
He was stately, with perfectly styled snow-white hair and aristocratic features. He wore a flawlessly tailored white suit. In his hand he held a white porcelain cup, from which he drank dark, almost black coffee.
He raised his eyes to the soul that had entered. In his gaze there was neither surprise nor interest. Only a cosmic, boundless weariness and a touch of boredom. He took a final sip, placed the cup on the desk, and, leaning back in his chair, let out a quiet, long, lazy sigh.
"Ahhhh..."