It's my eighteenth birthday and I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
Jarvis looked at the bedside digital clock. The red figures blinked 12:01, staring back at him. With a sigh, he turned to the other side and pulled the threadbare covers over his body.
Eighteen years huh?
He had looked it up earlier and did a breakdown. Turning 18 meant he had lived for 6,575 days. That was equivalent to 157,712 hours. In minutes, that would be 9,468,720. And still counting.
It was ironic to Jarvis.
At first glance, the 6,575 days didn't seem like much.
As he lay on his thin mattress, snuggled under the covers, he pondered about his current life and his future.
His head was just blank
It was like he didn't have a life to live or something.
Everything sent chills down his spine, all so unfriendly, unfamiliar to him. It made him wonder if he had actually wasted these 6,575 days of his life.
He felt broken. Hell, he wouldn't even care if he died now.
Jarvis tossed and turned on the bed but sleep eluded him. With a sigh, he sat up and looked at the bedside clock again.
It said 12:37.
He reached for his laptop, - a second hand he got from a friend – and switched it on. The screen booted up and soon revealed his wallpaper, a manga character with exaggerated features.
In moments, he opened the search engine. Subconsciously, his fingers rapidly typed the word Pornhub. His index finger hovered a couple of seconds above the enter key.
Finally, he shook his head. No, not today.
His finger moved up and cleared the words in the search box.
His head empty, Jarvis stared blankly at his screen for a couple of seconds then chuckled self-deprecatingly.
His life was so fucked up that apart from porn, he didn't know what else to search.
Fine… let's try reading. He typed in manga.com. The screen loaded for a couple of seconds before revealing the site.
Network here was so bad.
Well, what was he expecting when he lived in a shitty city like New Prosperity? The name of the city was a far cry from the actual situation.
The place, bluntly put, was a slum.
It had one of the highest crime rates in the country, filth was everywhere, and gangs? They were all over the place.
Jarvis lived in the west side of the city and just here alone, there were more than five gangs competing for hegemony and turf.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Jarvis randomly scrolled through the site, looking for a suitable manga to pass the night.
Nothing attracted his interest though.
Either he had read it before and was fed up with it or the manga itself sucked.
People wrote literally anything these days. Harems of elven beauties, cold young masters, idiots with gazillion dollar systems.
Ha.
Like that would ever happen in real life.
Frustration tugged at his head like incessant pangs of hunger. Even on his birthday, he continued to achieve next to nothing.
Should he watch a movie, or boot up a game?
Jarvis knew he was not in the mood for either.
That was when a pop-up ad in the bottom corner of the screen caught his eye. There was this thing about manga and online novel sites; too many ads.
It was annoying but there was nothing to be done about it.
The ad though was unlike the others previously displayed on the site. Mostly, what was shown were scholarship ads, game ads, travel ads, dating ads, and fortune telling ads.
This ad was incredibly plain, on a light blue background. It had just four words. [Seeking answers? Click here.]
Jarvis had to admit that strangely, this caught his attention.
His curiosity was piqued at this point and soon, his mouse pointer hovered on the ad. With a click, he was redirected to another site.
It was filled with brilliant colors of red, gold and blue, mystical symbols and hexagrams, stars and other mystic crap that was normally seen on charlatan sites.
Jarvis resisted the urge to groan.
He should have known this was just another hoax.
He didn't bother to read anything on the webpage. With determination, he moved his mouse pointer to close this scam but to his dismay, his laptop was frozen.
Jarvis scoffed at the sheer unbelievability of it all.
Like seriously?
As expected of a second hand laptop. Constant freezing, slow loads, it was just a bore.
He would have discarded it a long time ago if only his food delivery job helped him make enough to get a new one.
There was only so much a person could earn from food delivery and in a slum like New Prosperity, tipping was almost nonexistent.
What a joke; most of the people here couldn't afford three square meals, himself inclusive.
Even if he got a tip, it was just going to be a dollar or a couple of pennies.
With nothing better to do and his screen frozen for the time being, Jarvis decided to read the scam. At least, he could get a couple of laughs from it.
His eyes flitted rapidly through the screen, skimming the lines.
A few seconds later, he couldn't help but gasp. 'No way.'
The things written here were too fantastical and ridiculous. An impending danger threatening the whole galaxy?
The apocalypse of all races?
Come on, this was bullshit.
His lips curved into a chuckle as he continued to read further, amusing himself. Who had so much free time to come up with such apocalyptic crap?
Thankfully, his screen unfroze but he was in no hurry to leave this site yet.
Jarvis scrolled down slowly, reading the contents below and with each passing second, as his eyes descended past lines of text, his chuckles stopped and his smile faded.
What was this?
This had to be fake… right?
The page wasn't speaking about the apocalypse of all races anymore. Rather, it was talking about him!
Yes, somehow, the content of the site had magically morphed into his life history. This wasn't funny anymore.
Dread and horror slowly begun to fill his body and his fingers trembled in trepidation on the keyboard.
Was someone stalking him?
Was he being monitored?
In panic, he lifted his head and frantically looked around his room. It was dark and he could barely make out the narrow windows.
This only increased his fear.
Jarvis entertained the thought of calling the police for a few seconds but dismissed it. Knowing them, they would think this was a prank and probably arrest him instead.
He wanted to shut the damned machine off and sleep but he just couldn't.
Not after he finished reading the life history of Jarvis Chen.