Touch

The story I'm telling here is perhaps the first chapter of a love story and it began the day the universe had another unemployed person.

Honestly, the universe is so vast, one more unemployed person is nothing to care about and who cares, except me. And the reason I care is funny, oh the unemployed person who is the lord of time, the king of leisure and the greatest gossiper in the entire online world is me. And now I will continue gossiping about my own story.

Illustration: VAN TIN

I have an office job, not busy but also do not feel like I have a lot of free time. I live alone, go to work in the morning and come back in the evening, the rest of my time is spent on some trivial habits, mainly surfing the internet like all the residents in this twenty-first century city.

They call this era the era of uncertainty and I completely agree. I seem to have set myself up to accept the unexpected, so the day I was fired I just laughed lightly, no big deal, today I lost by a score of one - no, but tomorrow I will get it back, who knows.

I didn’t feel sad at all when I had time to follow all the sensational changes on the internet in the following days. Politics , religion, showbiz, the virtual currency market… Every day was filled with information for me, I processed it as if I was standing on the top of the world looking down on all living beings.

The thing is, I felt like I was living all the previous days combined, until one day…

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It was almost two in the morning, after a day of hard work as a commentator, I felt exhausted. The endless heated arguments on the seemingly simple internet world without weapons like sticks or guns were so draining and devastating to people even though they only took place on a touch screen.

I couldn’t sleep. No matter how tired I was, I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know if it was because I had a cup of coffee. There were still many people awake at this hour, but the activity had slowed down. The accounts that were arguing with me were only coming in and out sparsely.

When I can’t sleep like this, I tend to just watch whatever comes across my mind. And at that moment, a video hit me right in the face, a video with only a few lines of text that was less than a minute long, but each sentence and each word was aimed straight at me and never missed a shot. Oh my gosh, whoever created and spread this sad virus really deserves a punch.

The video, oh, it's about a generation that likes to joke, like me. Unemployed. Depressed. Lonely. Narcissistic. All of this "combo" comes together to form an attitude of joking about life. Joking to survive. Joking to escape. Joking as a survival mechanism and it's spreading across the internet like an epidemic.

Don’t blame them, they are just losers and unfortunate people who have to do what they can to survive the loneliness that the times have given them… The video ends with this sentence and I feel like life has just punched me in the face, bruised. Unemployment, depression, loneliness… I seem to have it all.

Something bitter and painful welled up inside me. The touchscreen, it irritated me and I stared at it like a criminal. The things that were running past me were distorted and jagged. I dropped the phone.

I don’t know what I was thinking but I opened the door to the balcony. I had only opened it a few times since I rented this room because it was so small. The damn video, it arrived on the day I felt the most insecure. My birthday. Who cares!

Actually I know birthday is something very private and people don't need a name to be remembered, they just need someone who cares enough about them.

I sat down on the doorstep, in the dim light. By this time I was starting to get fat and wobbly, but luckily I could still fit through the narrow gap in the door. The night was so sad. And as deep as a graveyard.

The things on the touchscreen still linger in my mind. Oh, the avatars, the accounts… is there anything new that’s actually alive? Even the accounts I follow, those sensational stories and the accounts that are fighting me to the death, does it all mean anything?

I would have sat there and melted into the night, the eternal darkness, if it weren’t for the light from the room across the alley. The alley was so small that two motorbikes could barely pass each other, so the distance from me to that room was only a few meters. It had been a long time since I had noticed who was staying across from me.

I didn't even bother to look at the rooms next to me. I often passed by with a feeling of discomfort when I encountered people who were also hiding in makeshift shelters like me. How could they understand that in another world I was something extraordinary?

But that was a few minutes ago, and now everything feels so strange to me, the touch screen has probably turned into a fossil and can no longer receive or react to my emotions. Luckily there is still a little light on the other side holding me back.

I looked over and saw that it was someone of the opposite sex. The window was open but the person must not have known I was looking. It was two in the morning and I never opened the balcony door. So I just peeked.

But not like a pervert who likes to peeping on women, I looked at that person because I needed something to fill the void in front of me. And in my head too.

I looked without caring whether they were beautiful, ugly, old or young. At first, I just looked to fill the void. Then I saw something that interested me. That was the big bouquet of wax flowers, the cake and the very luxurious gift box on the table.

How could such a horrible coincidence happen? Was some cosmic force at work? Somehow it was her birthday too? And was she doing it to remind me or to stab me further?

Because of this damn coincidence, I couldn’t take my eyes off that room, even if I wanted to. I had to look to see what else life would do to tease me. I guessed and imagined all the possible situations that could happen on a birthday, the things people did and the expressions they showed…

Feeling self-conscious, my head “jumped” and I did a spectacular “turn”. So that’s it, back and forth, like a ritual. I started laughing. The table was equipped with a magical lighting system to serve the “selfie” or “livestream” needs of professional netizens. Every beautiful angle was meticulously researched and recorded. As meticulous as an artist with his favorite work.

Of course the artist also appeared in a few frames but that was normal, more notable was the cat wearing a pretty hat that was just dragged in. Oh my, a noble white cat, a true pet of noble ladies.

I can imagine quite a few scenarios and each one can make me laugh. What motivates someone to stay up at 2am and take a picture with a cat? Is it fun? Is it free? Or is it loneliness?

Those flowers, those gifts, those cakes, who sent them? Who paid for them? Who knows, who knows, maybe the recipient is also the buyer? In this day and age, anything can happen, and the situation I just thought of is not an unfounded joke.

Just live, live in the middle of the storm of the virtual age and you will know everything. I even imagine the woman staying up all night to "scan" the photo editing app and think of content to post online. It has to be something short, sensational, trendy. Luxurious. Romantic. Humorous. Or sentimental like a poem...

I found that when I focused on something or someone other than myself, all my sadness disappeared. I felt so bad but now it seemed like all the misfortunes had been poured into the room across the street. No comparison, no pain, netizens often say, but in my case, the more I compared, the more comfortable I felt when I saw clearly that there was someone in front of me who was more unfortunate than me. Much more unfortunate, because at least I was clear-headed in knowing what I was going through.

That damn video cleared my head a bit and I was expressing my sympathy for my fellow human beings, specifically the girl in the room across the street. But how do I let people know that I sympathize?

Suddenly, I was afraid if the room across from me went out. Suddenly, I wanted to do something. Maybe I needed someone to know that I existed, that this was me, a living entity, a man of flesh and blood.

I didn’t have much time left as the light on the dressing table was turned off on the other side. Frantically, I stood up to find the light switch. I had forgotten how to turn on a light bulb and where the switch was. Or maybe it never existed.

But no matter, I picked up my phone, slid across the touch screen and touched “flash”. Light burst out in the middle of the balcony. From the opposite side, someone looked out…

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/cam-ung-3154505.html