Temporary Address E1C2
By: Arjun Blackwood ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Episode 1: Temporary Stay
Chapter 2: Upstairs Lights
February 19th, 2024. 6:30 AM.
The alarm on my phone rang exactly once before I grabbed it half-conscious and shut it off immediately.
Then everything after that happened automatically.
Bathroom.
Brush teeth.
Shave.
Wash face.
Shirt.
Pants.
Belt.
Tie.
Hair.
Bag.
For a solid eight minutes, my body moved faster than my brain did.
I was already halfway through buttoning up a clean white dress shirt while mentally planning absolutely nothing in particular.
Then suddenly–
”…Wait.”
I stopped.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
No incoming emails.
No unread Slack or WhatsApp notifications.
No “urgent revisions” sent at six in the morning by a manager pretending to respect work-life balance.
I stared at myself in the mirror.
Ironed white shirt.
Black slacks.
Proper belt that I definitely overpayed for.
Even my shoes were already neatly placed beside the door.
Ready.
And then I remembered.
Right.
I don't work there anymore.
Actually, I don't work anywhere right now.
“…Oh.”
The silence after that realization somehow felt louder than the alarm.
I rubbed my face slowly.
Well.
At least the outfit still fit. I thought to myself while staring at the mirror.
That’s something.
I checked my phone again.
6:46 AM. My second alarm had just gone off a minute ago.
And somehow I was already fully prepared for a workday that did not exist.
Yeah, that felt a little pathetic.
Last night probably didn’t help either.
After coming back from the convenience store, I somehow ended up doom scrolling and looking at job listings again, watched some random YouTube videos from somebody called “iceberg boy”, and read multiple old forum threads until almost two in the morning.
A truly productive use of modern human life.
You don't get to judge me though, you people know damn well it's past midnight for you.
Probably. I'm just guessing.
My body still felt heavy from the lack of sleep as I walked out toward the living room.
Or, technically, the empty space pretending to be a living room.
No sofa.
No table.
No television.
Hell, there isn't even a rug.
Just my backpack, laptop charger, a box of clothes, a stack of blankets, and one pillow near the wall.
And so, in defeat, I sat down on the floor.
Then, like always, my stomach growled.
Right.
Food.
I looked toward the kitchen and remembered last night’s leftover curry sitting inside the fridge.
Well.
Leftover was generous.
There were maybe six bites left, maybe less.
I grabbed the container anyway before sitting back down on the floor near the front door.
The morning air drifting in from outside felt surprisingly nice.
Several mountains can be seen in the distance. A true nature's blessings that fortunate people would definitely pay thousands for.
But let's be honest, none of them would want to willingly live in a simple town like this.
I ate the curry cold straight from the container while staring outside at absolutely nothing in particular. Just chewing while staring blankly.
Honestly, this might’ve been the saddest visual of my adult life.
A man in formal office clothes eating cold leftover curry on the floor of a furniture-less apartment at seven in the morning despite being unemployed for months.
I look like a mixture of Saul Goodman and Rick Sanchez.
And somehow, it wasn't even rock bottom.
Did I use that reference correctly?
Anyway.
===
Footsteps came from right next door.
I looked up just in time to see Clara walking past the corridor.
She slowed down.
Squint.
Then stopped completely.
We stared at each other silently for a solid three seconds.
Me on the floor eating cold curry in full office attire.
Her holding a cup of coffee while looking increasingly concerned for my wellbeing.
“…You know there’s a shared microwave downstairs, right?” she asked eventually.
“I am aware.” I continue eating.
“Then why are you eating cold curry like a divorced father?”
“That’s an incredibly specific comparison.”
“You look professionally unemployed right now.”
“I technically am professionally unemployed.”
Clara looked down at the plastic food container.
“…Is that leftover convenience store curry? The cheap end-of-day deal?”
“Breakfast of champions.” She smiled a little.
“What's up with the suit?”
I looked down at myself.
Right.
Still dressed like I was about to attend a corporate seminar nobody wanted to be at.
…With a little curry stain.
“My body forgot I live here I guess.”
“Should I wear a bamboo kasa with a white tank top instead?” I added.
That got a chuckle out of her.
“If going downstairs takes too long, you could use my microwave if you want.”
“Hm?”
“Cuz, you looked genuinely miserable eating that.”
“That’s because it was cold.”
“Yeah. You didn’t even try reheating it.”
“Honestly? I committed too far emotionally at that point.”
Clara shook her head slowly.
“You’re a very strange person in the morning.”
“You say that like I improve later in the day.”
“Fair.”
She lifted her coffee slightly before continuing downstairs with a soft smile.
“Try sleeping before two next time.” she yelled from down the stairs.
I frowned.
“…How do you know that?!” I screamed softly.
“The lights were still on, genius.”
Right.
Thin walls.
I watched her disappear downstairs before looking back at the nearly empty curry container in my hand.
At some point during the last few years, exhaustion stopped feeling temporary.
It just quietly became part of my personality.
Y'know.. like Rick Sanch–
Yeah, yeah..
I know you guys get the pop culture references already.
===
Around midday, I found myself walking towards the convenience store still wearing the exact same clothes.
Honestly, at this point changing outfits just felt really unnecessary.
I hated doing extra laundry.
The air conditioning hit me like a wall of hard air.
“Please welco-” she stopped herself, grabbing something from behind her.
Yuki then handed me a freezing bottled coffee over the counter while staring directly at my shirt.
“You look like you got fired on the way to work.”
“That is dangerously close to what actually happened.”
“Hm. Figured.”
I went to grab my favorite items, but something stopped me on my track.
Freshly fried hot chicken tenders in the hot food section.
Crispy skin. Thick. Tender. Juicy meat.
Whoa, whoa, whoa… I'm talking about chicken here -_-
Oil dripping off.
The smell of herbs mixture.
And the whirring sound of the ventless hood above the fryer.
You know I can't stop myself.
“I'll take two of the chicken tenders, please.”
“Oh, and do you guys have spicy tuna rice balls in stock?”
“There's some left, if I remember correctly.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Check behind the Chicken Mayo.”
When I got back, she chuckled while checking out my fit again.
“Y’know, normal unemployed people dress worse than this.”
“My bad. I’ll disappoint society properly tomorrow.”
That got a short laugh out of her.
“Please do. You’re making the rest of the convenience-store customers look unprofessional. Me included.”
“Well, at least you're in a uniform.”
“True. The day I get to wear my suit again, I won't be working double shifts in this place.”
“Pray for the day, ja?”
“Of course.” I nodded softly.
===
Stepping back outside with the cold coffee in hand, I felt as if the sun had thrown a flash-bang at me.
The heat outside already felt heavier than yesterday.
As I walked home, my thoughts drifted back toward the city again.
Office buildings.
Elevators.
Air conditioning strong enough to make the dry air feel artificially like the Arctic.
People pretending stress was professionalism.
My old copywriting job paid decently.
No… Not great. Far from it.
Just decent enough to keep you trapped there.
Deadlines.
Client revisions.
Campaign pitches nobody actually believed in.
Everything always urgent.
Everything always temporary.
And somehow I kept going like that for years.
Work became routine.
Routine became lifestyle.
Lifestyle became identity.
Then my mother passed away while living abroad with my older brother.
I still remembered taking calls between meetings like nothing happened right after.
Replying to business emails while helping handling funeral arrangements.
I didn't let myself breathe.
Went back to work two days later because I genuinely didn’t know what else to do with myself.
Maybe that was the real problem.
Work was never just work to me.
It was structure.
Noise.
Distraction.
A sense of purpose.
Something to keep life moving forward fast enough that I never had to stop and actually think about it.
So honestly, accidentally wearing office clothes today didn’t even feel embarrassing anymore.
It felt comfortable.
Familiar.
===
By the time I got back to the apartment, it was already close to tutoring hours.
I placed the convenience store bag down before organizing Noah’s lesson materials across the floor.
Grammar exercises.
Reading comprehension.
Vocabulary review.
This would technically be our sixth session together if counting last week.
Noah is a smart kid.
Just aggressively fifteen years old.
Fortnite. Roblox. TikToks.
A true definition of gen z.
Not to say I don't indulge myself.
As you can already see my outfit is partly the result of me burying myself in the sea of online content.
The lesson itself went smoothly enough.
Well.
As smoothly as English tutoring could go when your student clearly wanted to be literally anywhere else.
“Alright,” I said while checking the time. “Last five minutes. Let’s continue the rest tomorrow.”
Noah immediately dropped his pencil dramatically.
“Finally.”
“You say that every lesson.”
“Because every lesson feels emotionally long.”
“That sentence barely makes sense.”
“But you understood it.”
Fair enough.
He stretched lazily in his chair before suddenly looking at me again.
“So what’s city life actually like?”
“Hm?” I was genuinely confused.
“You lived there forever, right?”
“Ten years and a change”
“That’s insane, chat.” he said, shaking his head.
You know what.
Yeah. It kind of was.
I leaned back slightly in my chair.
“How does it feel?”
“How do I explain this…”
For a moment, I thought back to endless office buildings, crowded trains, late-night convenience store dinners, coworkers surviving entirely through caffeine and sarcasm, people rushing everywhere like time itself was chasing them personally.
“The city feels fast,” I said eventually.
“Like… weirdly fast.”
Noah listened quietly.
“It's high rise buildings to work, but a lousy apartment to live in.”
“The kind where you need to walk up six flights of stairs just to reach your door. Where you need to throw your key down for your roommates because there is no buzzer.”
“Where you need to walk thirteen blocks with three bags of laundry in the freezing night of winter.”
“There's no shared laundromat?” he asked
“Nope.” I giggled.
“And that's not it.”
“Faulty wirings. Leaky ceilings. Painted floors with holes in them.”
“You wake up tired, go to work tired, commute tired, eat tired, sleep tired, then somehow do it all again before your body fully understands yesterday happened.”
“That sounds really horrible. Like depressingly terrible.”
“It kind of is.”
“Then why stay there?”
Good question.
I laughed quietly.
“Because after a while, speed starts feeling normal.”
The room became quiet for a second.
“I think,” I continued slowly, “somewhere along the way I got too used to treating life like something to optimize instead of something to actually live.”
Noah blinked once.
“That sounded super old. Like, ‘old’ old, omega old.”
“You sound like one of those wise-old-man, like Obi-wan or Yoda from Star Wars.”
“Thank you, young one.”
“You’re welcome, Boomer.”
After the lesson ended and Noah went downstairs, I stayed sitting there alone for a while.
The apartment was quiet again.
The only sounds you can hear are the hums of the fridge, clock's ticking, and the movements of the fans rotating.
Evening sun hitting rooms with no furniture.
Sink half full with water slowly dripping.
Still renting.
Still unsure what exactly I was doing with my life.
But somehow, for the first time in years, things had finally become slow enough for me to notice it.
Life is temporary.
And honestly?
I wasn’t sure I had actually enjoyed much of it so far.
===
SNS:
@GrumpyTeflonPan:
Unemployed people waking up early for absolutely no reason.
🤡🤝⏰
Me standing in the kitchen at 6:45AM like I'm the CEO of Jobless Corporation. 🐥Not to mention passing out because you forgot to eat properly.
February 19th 2024 • Yapper for YouPhone
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The Convenience Store down the street:
