Alveros was a chef and an excellent one at that. His restaurant was the most popular in Bucharest. He was a traditional Romanian man who married his wife at 25. He had three boys who admired him. They were his treasure, his salvation.
He was determined to teach them one thing: Always strive for improvement no matter who you need to sacrifice in the process.
He was known in the city as the man who always smiles. Unfortunately, no man can escape the gaze of the envious.
Leon, the owner of the restaurant next to him was a jealous young man. One who never had to work for a single thing his entire life, even his restaurant was a gift from his generous corrupted father.
He always tried to humiliate Alveros at social events but that did nothing but gain him an unfortunate reputation in the process. In contrast, he gave his rival Alveros a finer reputation as he constantly defended Leon.
Jealousy ate him alive. This evil young lad spent days and weeks thinking of a way to destroy Alveros both mentally and financially. One conclusion was met by the end of the brainstorming: No one and I mean no one, can escape cockroaches. A weird conclusion if you ask me.
The next day, he was at his cousin's house, Adi's house. He was a sewer cleaner, the owner of one of the biggest sewer cleaning companies in the country.
There was only one request Leon made: Forbid the sewers underneath Alveros's restaurant from being cleaned. In fact, it would be ideal if it could be transformed into a perfect habitat for cockroaches.
The cousin was skeptical at first, but no sewer cleaner can say no to 500 000 ROM (the equivalent of 100 000 euros). Leon was excited to see how broken Alveros would become. Little did he know he would create a legend.
Leon was an intelligent man, never trying to radically implement his plan. He didn't want Alveros to be suspicious. Moreover, he wanted him to sink into self-hatred and regret later on for not doing his best to kill these insects when they first started to rise.
The first few weeks were quite easy to deal with: He killed 6 to 10 cockroaches a week by stepping on them.
A month passed, and a few per week turned into a dozen per day. Alveros started buying sprays to deal with these insects.
Two months passed and Alveros was at war with them. What seemed like an army of hundreds of cockroaches was always in the back of his kitchen armed with bacteria and all sorts of diseases.
Alveros tried everything. He contacted the sewer cleaning company to deal with this abomination. No response. Even over 100 thousand RONs (20 000 euros) per month went to insect cleaning products and services whose owners swear it was nothing more than child's play. No results.
His reputation hit rock bottom. The number of his clients was halved
The taxes were already robbing him of a third of his income but the cleaning services sucked him dry by leaving him with less than a quarter of his income.
He dipped from the finest chef and restaurant owner in Romania to a broken third-rate chef and divorced man.
His children started loathing him. His own offspring wanted nothing to do with him. That in and of itself was a fatal blow to a family man like Alveros.
His employees started resigning one by one as they saw how the business was rapidly declining.
Only one person stood by his side, Nico, the 17-year-old teenager who swore on his honor to rebuild the Alveros empire alongside his boss. No matter what it takes.
In the 6 months that followed, only tourists frequented the place because they were new to the place, so the rumors had not yet reached them.
Nico and Alveros were in the abyss pit. No clients, no family, and no reputation. Even the one cheerful man turned into a living corpse, one whose past could never be guessed.
Alveros tried to open another restaurant elsewhere, but to his unfortunate surprise, the curse followed him there too. He was similar to a bird in a cage, never escaping this hex.
Leon was satisfied. He finally broke his competitor, his old competitor.
Alveros became a relic of the past. He gave up. He asked Nico to come earlier that Sunday.
He gave him half of his savings, 90 000 euros, a fortune for a 17-year-old kid. Nico declined it at first but Alveros' look sold the deal.
He tried so desperately to smile, a very awkward smile. Nico hugged his boss, telling him what a remarkable man he was, is, and always will be, and how he could always rely on him. When Alveros felt that hug, he could not help but shed tears like waterfalls. They were tears of regret, self-hatred, and hope.
He would find a way out of this curse. It was a curse that followed him from one restaurant to another.
He traveled to Morocco to learn the best ways to kill cockroaches at the best cleaning service university in Africa.
That was the start of an urban legend: The Cockroach Slayer.