Life here in the city is hard. There are many opportunities here, but it is hard to be noticed. Everyone comes here: the brilliant and bewildered alike, all seeking their own golden moment, their conflux of luck and timing that will land them that dream job, or that moment in the spotlight.
After I finished my stint in college, I too wanted to find that dream job. That was a year ago, and all I have to show for it are stacks of rejection notices in my rented room. They all say the same thing or some variant of it. [Thank you for applying, and though we are no longer looking for applicants, we wish you the best in your future endeavors.] I didn't even need to print out those rejection notices. Everything is digital these days. I simply did so to serve as a reminder to myself. Every day, when I send out more applications, I look at those binders to remember what I've already done, and what I must still do. Last night, I stayed up late sending several more applications than I normally do. Perhaps one of them will finally bite.
Still, I have to pay rent, which is why I'm out on the streets on a cold winter morning. The chill wind blows through the city streets as I walk onwards, bundled up in my winter coat. The hot drink I hold in my hands provides some relief, its warmth soaking into my cold hands. I exhale, the moisture in my breath condensing instantly into a puff of white vapor, and I take a sip of the drink. It is a sweet bean soup, and warms me up instantly as it goes down.
It will take ten minutes of walking to reach the convenience store where I work as the cashier. I finish my drink and discard the can into the nearest rubbish bin. I check my smartphone for the time. 0510. Satisfied, I return it to its resting place within my haversack and throw it upon my back. A quick shuffling of my haversack to redistribute the weight inside, and off I go.
As I continue to walk, the wind picks up speed and I grit my teeth, leaning into the wind to get purchase on the tiled pavement. Above me, the streetlamps providing the only light before dawn flicker eerily. It feels like a horror movie as I trudge forwards, pulling down the hood of my coat to shelter from the wind. The weather forecast this morning didn't say anything about a winter storm of such strength. It feels like everything is changing these days. The economy, the city, and now even the weather.
A white mist engulfs me suddenly, blown towards me by the now-fearsome wind. Snow? Surely the weather forecast couldn't have been so wrong. The temperature shouldn't be low enough to allow for snow to form. It's cold, but not nearly that cold today.
The wind is now unbearably strong, and I have to almost lean to the point of falling over. Each step forward is a herculean effort, and the pavement below feels almost like its grabbing on to my boots as I trudge forwards. It feels like I have been walking for almost twenty minutes at this point, and even at half my normal speed, I should have reached the convenience store by now. For the snow whipped up by this storm to be so dense as to obscure vision, surely this is a once-in-a-century snowstorm of legend.
Then, suddenly, the wind stops.
My weight, previously supported by the fearsome gusts, is unbalanced and I fall forward. I throw out my hands to break my fall, and I manage to prevent myself from hitting my head on the dirt path before -
Dirt path?
I scrabble to my feet and throw off my hood. The vision-obscuring snow whipped up by the storm has subsided, and now a gentle snowfall flitters down from the skies above. Around me, a snow-covered forest stretches out in all directions, seemingly endless in size, illuminated by the moon hanging above in the sky like a crystal globe.
I try to look back at the path I've been walking, but my bootprints in the snow only go back several paces behind me. Everything else is cloaked in endless white, an all-consuming blanket of snow. Without the concrete-covered walls and floors to reflect sound about, the snow devours the sound, plunging the world into a silence unlike anything I've ever experienced in the city.
Calm down, this can't be possible. I...I must be hallucinating. Or dreaming. Perhaps this is the sleep-addled manifestations of my mind. I try to pinch myself through my coat, hoping to wake myself up from this dream. Only the sharp bite of my self-inflicted pain hits me. There is no sudden arousal to the waking world, no catapult nightmare reaction, only the continual sensation of cold from the snow lightly falling around me.
I remove my haversack from my back and pull out my smartphone. A quick press of its buttons awakens it, and as I expected, there is no signal. The time is clearly displayed on the screen. 0520. Only ten minutes have passed since I started walking to the convenience store, and suddenly I've walked into what might as well be another world.
Is this my conflux? My golden moment? To freeze to death in some snow-devoured forest? If this is it, then surely all of my existence has been a joke, a prank played on me by the divines.
I let out a sigh, the vapors of my exhalation escaping as wisps in the wind. There is no point cursing this fate. Surely there must be other people nearby. I look to the horizon, and spot the distant sunrise manifesting as a lightening of the sky.
Civilization gathers around water, and if I head downhill, eventually I'll reach somewhere where there might be a creek or a river kept warm by the ground or flowing just too fast to freeze. Then, I'll follow it, and with luck I'll reach a settlement if it exists. Or I'll die. That's also a possibility.
Well, no use wondering. I'm here now. To stand still is to simply accept death. But to keep walking is to possibly survive.
And I like those odds.