Lin Chuan had been sitting in the same corner booth for the past eleven hours, it was 1:35 AM, and the only sounds he'd heard were the hum of the vending machine and the occasional shuffle of the security guard's footsteps. The guard had passed twice, glancing at him with something between pity and annoyance, it was not uncommon for a student to be still up at this hour especially this period near exam time.
Lin Chuan's eyes burned.
He rubbed them with the heels of his palms, hard enough to see colors bloom behind his eyelids, then forced them open again. The cursor blinked at the end of a paragraph he'd rewritten four times. he checked the corner of the screen, eight hours.
Eight hours.
It needed to be perfect, he could do this, He'd done more with less.
The coffee beside him had gone cold hours ago. He took a sip and frowned, grimacing at the bitter sludge, he opened a can of an energy drink and mixed it with the coffee to drown the taste.
Lin Chuan had learned early that the world didn't care about you.
He'd grown up in a single, room apartment with walls thin enough to hear the neighbors fighting. His father drank badly and his mother indulged him and worked double shifts.
He had been extremely smart from a young age knowing when to win and when to loose, he learnt that in order to shine he must first leave the reached place
But once he graduated, once he had his degree, and get the funding, he wouldn't need to be invisible anymore.
Just eight more hours.
He scrolled through his thesis. The words blurred. He blinked hard, shook his head, and kept reading. It was good work. Solid. Original. His advisor had called it "promising," which in academia was practically a declaration of love. If he finished strong, if he defended well, the research fellowship was his. And the fellowship meant funding. And funding meant freedom.
His chest twinged.
Lin Chuan ignored it. Stress.lack of food. Lack of sleep. He'd had worse. He reached for the coffee, found it empty, around him were several cans of caffeine, he considered whether the vending machine was worth the walk. It wasn't. He'd hold out until sunrise, then grab something from the cafeteria before his morning meeting with…
The twinge came again. Sharper.
"Ugh!"
He groaned pressed a hand to his sternum, frowning. The pain was spreading from his chest outward, his vision swam for just a moment, then cleared.
He probably should have eaten something.
He looked at the clock. 3:52 AM. If he finished this section, he could take a break. Twenty more minutes.
His fingers found the keyboard.
The words on the screen stopped making sense they looked like a mess of letters, he could tell what each letter was but could not make a sentence with them.
He stared at them, confused, watching as they seemed to float away from each other, letters scattering like startled insects. The cursor blinked. Blinked. Blinked. He tried to focus, but his eyes wouldn't cooperate. The pain in his chest was a fist now, squeezing, and his arm was going numb,his left arm, which was a symptom, he knew that, he'd read about it somewhere…
Heart attack.
The thought was surprisingly calm, he'd been surviving on caffeine and 1 hour sleep, he picked up his phone and called the emergency number.
As he dialed he felt his arm go weak, his body was shutting down, one system at a time, and all he could do was sit there in his corner booth and watch it happen. The library was empty. The security guard wouldn't come for another hour.
"....."
A voice came from the phone but he was too weak to get it, he thought about his thesis. About the fellowship. About the future he'd been so close to touching. It was disappointing.
He didn't think it was unfair, he made the decision to be. Unhealthy but he'd learnt like always, he needed rest and a healthy body to enjoy fruits of his labour..
Then the pain swallowed everything else, and Lin Chuan slipped out of his body like a hand pulling free of a glove.