Rondo.

An outwardly insignificant city in the country of Salanta. And if it were a person, it would be a drunkard pretending to be a complete imbecile, causing havoc, attracting troublemakers, when in fact, it was very much aware of the damages it had done.

This was the type of city Neil Caiben had lived in. A twenty-four-year-old who once lived in the slums of Rondo. The dirtiest, most savagely violent place in the whole of Salanta.

It has the highest crime rate in the country with usually at least two to three murders a week mostly related to drugs, illegal gambling, and prostitution.

A dirty place with rubbish wherever you look. The smell was so nauseating that if you hadn't lived there all your life, you'd surely get sick.

And because of that, whenever it rains even for a little bit, it would flood. The waterways are clogged with plastics and other abominations.

Gone were its glorious days. It used to be a beautiful city once upon a time until it has fallen so low it became the cradle for drug dealers and criminals going into hiding.

Again, this was the type of city Neil Caiben used to live in.

And if you asked other people about him, they would say stuff like: an unfortunate man. Sick in the head. A fool. A man who had thrown away his life for a woman.

His life wasn't really a secret, per se. Rather, it was like an open book.

His mother was a prostitute and he didn't know his father.

He graduated high school through the grit of his teeth. Because of this, many thought he was an outstanding student despite his poor upbringing. A gifted child.

What they didn't know was that going to school was his way of escaping his reality. There was nothing he hated more than being reminded of it, so he would rather drown in school activities.

And though he may not know anything about his father, Neil was certain he was a foreigner.

It was because of how he looked. He was tall. Has pale-white, freckly skin. Ocean blue eyes, high-bridged nose, and thin lips. Far from the short stature, caramel complexion, and big noses of the people native in Salanta.

However, he may look different but his story wasn't that unique.

Kids not knowing anything about their father was a normal thing in Rondo. In fact, having a complete and functional family was considered out of place.

After all, how can a woman know who the father was if they slept with multiple men each night for a living?

His mother was… well, always drunk whenever she came home at dawn as she reeked of semen after a long night of hard work.

While some creepy old 'customers' would ask Neil when his mother was gonna come out every time he stepped out of their door.

It was so revolting that he felt like throwing up each time. He was sick of it. He always thought that if he wasn't born in this type of family and environment then maybe... maybe he wouldn't have to hear and experience any of this crap.

But that's impossible. It already happened and this kind of stuff was to be expected. They live in Rondo after all and in the slums no less. People there have no tact. They only care about their own pleasure and amusement.

They don't have dreams and are content with their lives. Because according to them, there's no point in dreaming anyway.

People there have already given up. To them, to be born into that kind of place was a shackle in itself. There's no running away. You go too far and you'll choke. You do nothing and you'll drown.

You are bound to have this kind of mentality sooner or later if you grew up in this kind of place. Hardly surprising at all.

Neil couldn't afford college so he was stuck taking care of his mom who has become wasted after years of abusing her body. She died at the age of thirty-seven and he was left alone.

During this time, he fell in love with a woman.

Clarissa. That's her name. A woman quite average when it comes to her looks and has nothing worth remembering about aside from her voluptuous figure.

Like Neil, she graduated from Rondo National High School. She didn't get any special awards and honorable mentions. But that didn't stop her from loving herself — a little too much going by standard.

A narcissist who goes around running after boys with pretty faces like Neil Caiben, preferably those with huge dicks.

Neil, who was quite new to things like affection coupled by his raging hormones became drunk with her liquor of sweet words and sultry initiatives. Mistaking lust for love.

But how could you possibly blame him? If lust feels like love indeed until it is time to make sacrifices.

They had lived together for a while, about two years. He worked from one job to another to save for their marriage. He worked especially hard when he found out she was pregnant with his child.

He felt like he was finally pulling his life together until he woke up one morning and realized that she had left him. She left a note behind. It said that she couldn't marry him and that she was sorry.

He was devastated.

He flipped the whole city searching for her. He needed an explanation. Was everything a lie? All the time they spent together. Were they real? Or has he only been deluding himself?

In his search for her, he found out that she was about to wed another man. An old man. A very old man. And that the child wasn't his to begin with.

Turned out that she was into that kind of thing as well. Saggy and wrinkly.

She got herself a rich grandpa, too old to be called a sugar daddy.

Neil felt like a fool. He wondered if anything has ever gone right with his life so far.

Then he started to wither away.

Life became meaningless to him.

A nihilist. Often associated with extreme pessimism and skepticism that condemns existence.

Not quite certain when it started. Maybe when Clarissa left him. Or in high school. Or when a bully started taunting him again as usual and for the first time, he beat the shit out of the poor kid and he was sent to the guidance office instead for standing for himself against a bully.

Maybe there was no point to doing this but he started to question if his life has any meaning at all. Like, at all. If he, a trifling human being who has barely contributed to the society, has any value at all.

And just like the people in Rondo, he started to sleep with countless women even when the sun was still up. Bury himself with alcohol and nicotine. Getting addicted to the small huffs of dopamine.

And no, it wasn't because he was a libido–driven, sex–deprived of an asshole. It was to fill the overwhelming loneliness that seemed to bulldoze him from the inside, making a mess of him.

And when 'Typhoon Yora' struck Salanta three months after Clarissa had left him, he committed his first murder.

Unintentional as it may be, it surely wasn't his last but this will be a story for another time.

A lot of things happened after that. A few gratifying moments, but mostly unappealing and left a bitter taste in his mouth. Fleeting insignificant times.

But when he turned twenty-four, he decided to turn a new leaf. A rather meddlesome stranger made him do it.

He felt like shit but he didn't plan on dying like one so he thought he would start anew. But quitting alcohol and nicotine proved to be quite a difficult task. He had to keep himself busy to fight the urge.

He started working in a construction site. Though the job was physically taxing, at least he didn't feel like garbage anymore. Or at least not as much.

He worked there by day regardless of the weather while he worked at the convenience store at night.

He was killing himself unknowingly by doing this and barely resting at all. The same way with how he stayed up late at night to study in high school.

Then one day as he was laying cement on the seventh floor, the world spun around him.

His vision flickered back and forth and before he knew it, he was already laying on the ground, blood pooling out from his head. A piercing pain assaulted his whole body.

Accompanied by the ringing of his ears was a siren. It was an ambulance.

But it was too late. He was declared dead on arrival.

Neil Caiben died.