**Disclaimer, read this chapter at your discretion**
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Ely waited for the ringtone to ring a few more times before accepting the call.
Bringing the phone close to his ear while holding it still with his shoulder. As Ely sat on his bed, he pressed his hands together. The pants he wore were supposed to be vibrant and checkered on top of the color purple—the one he had on was discolored to the color gray. Only the black lines were visible.
There were many other clothes of his that were in the same state as this one, they were all overused.
"...Ely?" His father's tone was calm.
"Yeah?"
"Your mother called you already?"
"Yeah," Ely was used to his father's blankly asked questions.
For a while, the two were silent, there was no bond mending them together besides the blood in their veins. If you didn't know about the two prior and watched them walk—you'd think it was two strangers that somehow aligned their paces to the other.
They would never reach out to hang out or spend time unless Wei was there too. Ely was stuck to his mother like glue, hearing of all the things he did that left its scars on his mother changed how he saw Liu.
Ely never said his hate out front to his father, but that didn't mean it wasn't there.
Except now Ely was thirty-two, he was too old to be acting the same as he did when he was younger. So he tolerated Liu under the condition that he never attempted to 'make up for lost time.' He found that rather pointless. What's done is done.
Liu continued, "I know Wei told you to go out to pick out some clothes, I've sent some already. It's outside your door, I know how rebellious you become when given the chance so just pick out something from the bag. I've invited Tamari to a designated place for the two of you to meet."
That was the first time Ely would have heard the name of his 'potential' wife, Tamari.
He couldn't help but think how his father planned out everything step by step as if he was the one trying to marry her.
He never understood why his mother maintained her marriage with Liu, except for the underlying fact of anxiety and fear of judgment from others. At this point that shouldn't have mattered, the two surpassed their youth.
Liu's tone became more defined, "If I hear that you acted out of line—" Liu cut himself off trying to restrain his threat. "You have a day more of that nonsense freedom of yours, then you get it together and you get yourself some kids while you're at it."
With that, the call ended.
Ely's anger had already passed him, he went to his door and slowly opened it to see the bag filled with designer clothes for casual wear.
His father even covered the shoes. Ely brought it inside putting it next to the door as he went to sprawl out on the floor of his apartment.
Everyone in Ely's life never listened to him.
Not even his mother. She was the one to put him in acting and pushed him to keep at it when he wanted to stop.
Not his father either—just look at what he was pushing him to do now.
Not one person wanted to hear what Ely had to say or think. So he stopped, and they called him out for having a nasty attitude. Nothing pleased anyone.
He was a child star, and they still wanted more. Sucking his soul dry, asking him questions about things they knew he wouldn't have an answer to just to create drama. There was always something he was short to fulfill.
It was suffocating.
...'Dead people can't get pushed around,' Ely stared at the ceiling as the thought crossed his mind.
Then he sat up, his head turned to the side, meeting eyes with the shattered pieces that still lay on the kitchen floor.
'And dead people can't have a lasting marriage,'
With this, he rose from the floor walking towards the shattered pieces.
"Because they're dead.'
Ely let a sinister smile creep onto his face, there was nothing else he had to do in his life. He had seen most of it in his thirties.
He didn't need to have a wife or an adopted kid to say he had achieved the high of life. The room became eerie to the stranger stepping willfully into the shattered pieces, the blood stained the kitchen floor with every step.
'I'll play along,' Ely stepped to the broom on the other side sweeping the broken pieces colored in scarlet red.
'If everyone wanted a marriage, then that's what they were going to receive. And at the end, the no longer groom-to-be will be the man buried the following day six feet under.'
He'd play the role his parents wanted him to be best at, and then do what he wanted to once it was all over.
If they wanted a son who goes head over heels for a woman his father possibly had lusted after, then that's what he'd do. He'd please Tamari, making her Tamari Calvillo.
Ely would play the game they all wanted him to play best at.
He used to be an actor, after all, his job was to be fake. Convey emotions that weren't of your own. He had long retired from his acting career but this would be the very last time he delved into it.
It's been decades since Ely felt like he did in the moment, his heart didn't drum with a slowness—it began to race with a weird excitement.
He knew how weird that sounded as he sat on the edge of the bathtub with disinfectant and cold water running on the skin of his feet.
But it was this or being trapped in an unhappy marriage until his parents died. He could see that being far too long to wait out.
The ladder was Ely going somewhere far in the countryside. The only place where he could live peacefully and not be recognized. Yet that would be a hassle too, all that work just to wake up to bird shit and country folk?
Ely might've not known what Tamari looked like, yet she was the key to his unburdened freedom that awaited him in a place where the afterlife couldn't possibly exist.
There were [Divinities] in his world but there were no tales in history with documents of those who worshipped for a second chance, actually obtaining it. All that would be left for Ely to do was sell his things. Leaving no traces of it for randoms to reminisce over, and to find a place where he could execute the final part, his ending.
Ely rummaged through the clothes his father gave him, picking out the set he wished to wear and placing it on hangers by the empty side of his closet.
He picked up his phone once more—tomorrow would be the last day he worked at Ate To Eight. It'd be the last time he'd see Mr. Fattie too. Ely wasn't upset by this, he would be doing the job a favor by clocking in for his last day at all.
Ely's supervisor was a woman in her sixties, Briar Kamala.
A short woman despite the height of her sternness, she was usually tempered in the smallest of problems. The only thing that seemed to ground her were cats.
Her personality became bipolar in front of one. Kneeling to them and making noises for them. Allowing her slight curls at the end of her black hair to slowly hover around the sides of her arms.
She took good care of her teak skin, she was the type of person that people would comment on how good she smelt.
To a stranger, she looked like a well-brought-up daughter, but to Ely, she was a pain to deal with. Nitpicking everything he did, and would only do so on his shift. She was relatively quiet when Wangyue was around.
Quitting after his last day would be a small victory for Ely since he knew how she needed him. He was the only one to calm the cats during feeding time and attracted customers to her business.
She paid better than his other managers which was the only other plus of his job he could think of than seeing Mr. Fattie stride around the place confidently.
Everything was settled.
The last of his worries was the personality of Tamari. If Wei took a liking to her she had to be a reserved person, only bubbly to the people she had to be, and would have a small exterior. Wei had a thing for people who had trouble standing up for themselves—it made her feel needed.
Ely thought of how he'd look standing with his hands in an embrace with Tamari's. Her doe eyes would be entranced by the deadening impression of his own.
'I do.'