Alex had lived what most people would call a difficult life, but to him, it had never really felt like anything at all. That was the strange part.
From a young age, he had been diagnosed with alexithymia, and while other children laughed, cried, threw tantrums, smiled brightly, or sulked in corners, Alex had only ever watched them with a blank stare and a silent confusion that never really went away.
He could not understand why people made such a fuss over things that seemed so distant and meaningless to him.
Happiness, sadness, anger, pride, fear, excitement, regret, pain, affection, grief, he knew the words; he understood their definitions well enough, but they were just that to him, words and concepts.
Things other people claimed to feel deeply, while he stood outside of it all like a man staring through a glass wall into a world he could never enter.
It made life difficult in ways that others did not understand. He could not respond properly when he was supposed to. He could not comfort people when they cried. He could not share in the joy of celebrations. He could not grasp why certain words hurt people, why certain actions mattered, why people cared so much about things like pride and love and loss.
His opinions and beliefs clashed with the rest of the world over and over again, not because he wanted to be difficult, but because he simply did not understand.
What seemed cruel to others often seemed practical to him.
What seemed beautiful to others often seemed ordinary.
What seemed important to everyone else usually meant nothing at all to him.
For a while, his parents had tried. They had really tried. They had taken him to specialists, had read books, had spoken in soft voices, had been patient when he stared at them blankly after something that should have caused pain or joy.
They had tried to meet him halfway, but in the end, halfway was still too far away. Little by little, their patience wore down, and the warmth in the house thinned until it became just another place full of walls and doors and strangers that happened to share his blood.
School had not helped either. Children were simple in some ways and cruel in others. They thought he was strange, cold, broken, arrogant, creepy, stupid, heartless, or all of the above, depending on the day.
Teachers frowned at him when he failed to react properly. Adults gave him long looks filled with pity or discomfort. Some said he was pretending. Some said he needed discipline.
Some said he was sick in the head. Alex did not care enough to argue. Caring would have required something from him, and that something had always been missing.
As he grew older, that emptiness stayed. If anything, it became even more obvious. He watched people ruin themselves over love, family, betrayal, ambition, jealousy, and dreams, and none of it made sense to him.
They all seemed to be dragged around by invisible strings tied to their chests, while he alone stood still, untouched. It was boring. Painfully boring. Like watching rain fall on a concrete street for years and years with no sun ever breaking through the clouds.
At some point, he had picked up smoking. Not because he liked it, and definitely not because it made him look cool. It was not because he was stressed either.
As a person who is somewhat familiar with the medical department, he had simply wondered if maybe the burn in his throat, the weight in his lungs, the harshness of the smoke, maybe that might stir something in him. Anything at all. A spark of discomfort, pleasure, disgust, regret, satisfaction, whatever.
So he smoked. First cigarettes, then stronger things, and eventually cigars too. It became a habit, but not in the normal way. He was not addicted in the dramatic sense. It was more like an experiment he kept repeating because stopping felt no different from continuing.
And then, a week ago, he had finally collapsed.
He had been at work when it happened, just another dull day spent moving through routine like a ghost going through motions it did not care for.
A shortage of breath had struck him suddenly and hard, his vision swaying, his chest tightening until the world spun around him and his knees gave out.
He had woken up in a hospital with fluorescent lights glaring down at him and a doctor speaking in that careful, professional tone people used when they were trying to soften bad news.
And so he was told he had severe terminal lung cancer.
Apparently, he had been living with it for five years for the past five years. It didn't help that he didn't feel any great pain all this time.
It was incurable at that stage, and he had little more than a month left to live, maybe a little more if fortune was feeling generous, though the doctor had not sounded like a man who believed in fortune.
Alex had listened, nodded once, and that had been that.
The doctor had stared at him oddly, perhaps expecting some kind of breakdown, some denial, some anger, tears, fear, something human. But Alex had just looked at him and thought, I see.
That was all. He did not feel any sadness or regret, or any sort of panic clawing at his throat. If anything, the most notable thought he had was that it was mildly inconvenient.
Apparently, he was dying, and even then, he still could not feel anything about it. There was something faintly amusing in that, though even that amusement was more intellectual than real.
Now, one week later, he walked alone through a gloomy rain-soaked street with a thick cigar resting between his fingers, the ember at the end glowing red-orange in the damp dark like a stubborn little eye.
Evening had dragged itself across the city and left behind a sky full of bruised clouds. Rain fell in a steady curtain, making the streetlamps shine in hazy halos and turning the asphalt black and slick.
Water pooled in cracked gutters and flowed along the sides of the road in shallow silver streams.
And the neon lights of nearby shops reflected off the wet street in many colors, reds, blues, and yellows, stretching and twisting with every ripple.
The air smelled of rain, old concrete, smoke, and the metallic scent that always came before a storm really settled in.
Cars passed now and then with soft hissing sounds as their tires cut through the soaked road, their headlights sweeping over the sidewalk in pale white beams before vanishing again.