There was no doubt that Empire State University had proven itself to be an institution fully open to promising students.
As the young man continued on his way, taking in the various student preparations, he caught sight of some familiar faces stepping out of one of the foreign-food restaurants set up inside a classroom. The girl noticed him and waved from a distance. The young man pulled a watch from his pocket and realized he still had time, so he headed in their direction and approached them.
"Rilley, enjoying the food too? You should try what this restaurant has to offer," the girl said as soon as he reached them, pointing at the sign in front of the classroom: «Restaurant: Mexican Food».
The young man named Rilley gave the sign a brief glance before returning his gaze to the girl. She was a beautiful blonde with turquoise eyes, and her casual outfit only accentuated certain parts of her figure, adding even more charm to her beauty. Unlike many other girls, there was not the slightest trace of makeup on her face. In Rilley's eyes, she had everything she needed to pursue a career as a model.
Not letting his gaze linger any longer so as not to make her uncomfortable, he also looked at the young man standing beside her, holding her hand. A boy with brown hair and an average build, with a certain timid look about him, the kind that never dared hold another person's gaze and instead looked away.
To others, they probably looked like the typical young couple, openly displaying their affection without caring who might be around. To Rilley, however, they seemed more like a peculiar pair, something eccentric in which the girl clearly took the initiative. While she moved from place to place admiring the booths and attractions, the boy merely followed after her, looking somewhat embarrassed.
Rilley knew very well that the boy's timid demeanor was nothing more than a carefully crafted façade meant to draw attention away from himself.
"Gwen. Parker. I'm surprised to see you here," he said, focusing more on the young woman. "You especially. I thought you'd already be getting ready for the presentation."
The girl looked surprised by Rilley's words. "Oh. No, no," she said, shaking her head at once. "I asked Dr. Connors for the day off, and he agreed without any problem. I thought he would've told you."
That was when Rilley remembered he had a voice message from Dr. Connors sent the previous night. He had set aside every distraction so he could go to bed early and be ready for today's presentation.
"Now that you mention it, I forgot to check yesterday's messages... Very well. I won't take up any more of your time. You can keep enjoying your day off. It's certain that after a successful presentation, we'll be even busier."
Rilley turned away at once, with not the slightest intention of staying near the sickeningly sweet couple. Whenever he saw them, or even had them close by, he could not help the strange expression that threatened to appear on his face. Fortunately, he was very good at disguising his reactions and maintaining a serious appearance in most situations.
After that encounter, Rilley's mood changed completely. He lost all interest in looking around and focused only on walking toward his destination while sinking into his thoughts. He found himself remembering what his life had been like fourteen years ago. In the blink of an eye, his life had undergone a brutal one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
One ordinary day, he woke up and became aware that he was no longer the person who had been born into this world. At least, he no longer felt like that person. Strange memories flooded his mind, throwing his entire psyche into disorder. He felt trapped in a severe identity conflict. He was certain of who he thought he was, yet from deep inside emerged other thoughts, memories of a past life that tried to crush the few thoughts and memories belonging to his short new life.
It did not feel like a dream. Rather, it felt as though that past wanted to take everything from him and replace him completely. The immature mind of a child barely five years old had been reshaped into an advanced maturity. It was an indescribable process. The young mind could not endure it, and in the end it was consumed by that avalanche of memories, resulting in the fusion of two consciousnesses. A new individual, one carrying empirical wisdom, had opened his eyes. The blank canvas had been painted over in countless colors, from the brightest to the darkest.
Those memories and experiences had belonged to an unknown researcher—or rather, to a mediocre scientific researcher whose field in physics had centered on quantum mechanics. Ever since graduating from university, he had known no luck. Misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went.
After finding work as a technical assistant in a mid-sized company, his career had never taken off. It was not a matter of lacking knowledge or knowing how to apply it. While he could not be called a top-tier expert, his level had still been acceptable, slightly above average. The main obstacle to his advancement had been connections. Simply put, he had none. Despite writing articles of interest that might have helped reshape working hypotheses for projects, he received no recognition, and at times others even stole his work.
With a life like that, he had never managed to build anything stable. A mediocre technician in an equally mediocre job. From his chaotic social life, full of pressure and impossible expectations, came nothing but conflict, debt, and disappointment. No love life to speak of, no close friends, relatives who gradually drifted away. It was the sort of life befitting a lonely man who, for some strange reason, still managed to stay afloat through countless hardships.
It was a disordered life filled with bitterness. He could not even remember the last time he had felt happiness or smiled from the bottom of his heart. He could not place all the blame simply on bad luck. Certainly, luck had played a part, but he still had enough pride left to admit that some of the responsibility was his own. He had made wrong choices, as anyone would in life, with the only difference being that his mistakes had dragged him into ditches deeper than those of most people in similar situations.
That chaotic life had not stabilized even by the time he reached fifty. He remained in the same position at the same company, still enduring scoldings and humiliation from his superiors, watching younger men—some of whom had once been his peers—rise higher and higher simply because they possessed the right connections.
He certainly could have quit that job and tried elsewhere. Anyone else in his position might have done exactly that rather than tolerate such repression for so long. But by then he had already lost hope. It was not that he feared the uncertainty of the future. He simply no longer cared, and allowed everything to remain as it was. His life had been monotonous from beginning to end, without real likes or dislikes of his own, and it would likely have continued that way if he had not one day stumbled upon something that caught his interest.
One day, while doing his usual dull grocery shopping, he passed by a shelf in the book section. There, he saw something that, for reasons he could not explain, drew him in completely. The title on the cover was written in large yellow letters: «Amazing Fantasy» with a small number 15 beside it. The cover showed a figure in a strange navy-and-red suit, with a black spider on his chest, swinging on a web while saving another man in a green formal suit who was falling from a building. There were other details, but he paid them no mind. All of his attention was fixed on the costumed figure.
It was a reprint of a classic comic, so the price was not high. He paid for it immediately and took it home—to an old apartment in an aging building on the edge of the city. Once he had made himself comfortable, he flipped through the pages until he reached the story that presented the origins of the man on the cover. That was where his interest was born, not only in Spider-Man, but in Marvel comics as a whole.
At last, his monotonous and dreary life had gained a little color. He became an eager consumer of any medium in which Marvel stories appeared, whether official works or creations made by other fans: printed comics, digital comics, novels, and even conspiracy theories shared by fans across various social media platforms.
And yet, despite discovering comics through Spider-Man, Spider-Man was by no means his favorite. He saw him as just another one of those bound by fate. From his powers to his ordinary life, everything seemed already arranged for him, complete with tragedy and hopelessness, and still the character accepted it all submissively. He carried a responsibility imposed by his own great ego and lofty morality, binding himself and surrendering to a kind of self-imposed slavery. If only he could cast all of that aside and send those responsibilities to hell, if only he could become a little more selfish... then perhaps, just perhaps, he might brush against the slightest trace of happiness in his chaotic life.
What he felt was not really disgust toward Spider-Man. No—it was toward Peter Parker.
He could see that Peter had possessed everything needed to be happy. Despite the tragedies of his youth, he had a close family member who constantly showed him love and support, friends, and a woman who truly cared for him. But all of that had gone to hell because of his indecision and poor choices, and from then on his life had been marked by tragedy and hopelessness.
While Spider-Man inspired hope, Peter Parker's life was a complete mess. While Spider-Man supported everyone around him, those who supported Peter were struck by tragedy instead. The indecision, the poor choices, the submission to that pathetic life—he simply could not stand it. As a reader, the stories were interesting. But the moment one looked deeper, his blood would boil with anger at the sight of a fool wasting his life so completely. It was fiction, of course. None of it was real. And still, he could never stop himself from feeling angry whenever he thought about Spider-Man and Peter Parker.
The characters he truly considered his favorites were the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Ant-Man. His home was packed with comics and movies. Every bit of money he earned from work went, without exception, into that seemingly harmless hobby. What he failed to realize—or perhaps simply refused to see—was that his life was already falling apart, and that it was being held together only by tiny scraps stitched together through that fragile pastime. And misfortune, as one would eventually expect, finally arrived. Everything that had been hanging by the thinnest of threads reached its limit, and the thread snapped, letting it all fall into a dark abyss.
At seventy years old, nearly on the verge of retirement, forever single and without a single descendant to leave behind, he was suddenly fired without justification and forced to take the blame for his boss's mistakes. All his years of work were thrown away. When he returned to his old apartment in that ramshackle building, he came walking with some difficulty, a cardboard box clutched in his hands.
And in the blink of an eye, he no longer had a home to return to.
Before him stood the old building, engulfed in flames. Officers had cordoned off the area, preventing curious bystanders from getting too close, while firefighters struggled to contain the spreading fire.
After several hours of work by the firefighters, and once the officers had departed, the people around gradually dispersed, finding there was nothing more to see. Only one figure remained: an old man with a long beard, holding a cardboard box in both hands, his shadowed eyes fixed on the remains of the place that had once been his home. Then came the sound of thunder, and raindrops began to fall little by little, causing the few remaining passersby to hurry toward shelter.
Without saying a word, the old man walked toward the building, which was left in even worse condition than before after the flames had been extinguished. There, a young man spoke up, trying to stop him.
"Old man, you can't go in there. The firefighters said to stay back. Because of the age of the building and what happened, the structure could collapse at any moment."
But the old man did not listen. He continued on his way without sparing the young man even a glance. Soon he reached the place where the stairs should have been. The floor had already been consumed by the fire, leaving several gaping holes behind, and the broken steps no longer allowed him to climb properly. Somehow, he managed to make his way to where the door to his apartment had once been—or what remained of it. Once inside, he found none of his furniture. Everything had been completely devoured by the flames, leaving behind nothing but ashes.
Then the old man fell to his knees, wholly ignoring the pain such an action should have caused his aged body. The suffocating sensation and the sharp pain in his chest consumed all of his attention. He could feel something unimaginably heavy pressing down on his heart with the force of thousands of tons, as though it were being crushed completely.
Soft sobs escaped him as tears slipped from the corners of his eyes. It was a miserable kind of crying, one that drew him ever deeper into despair and shattered whatever desire for a better future he might once have had. After everything that had happened, what future could possibly remain? He was alone in this world now, with nothing left to bind him to it. The family that had once placed such high expectations on him no longer existed. Everything ended with him. There would be no legacy left behind. The world did not even know he had existed, and he would be easily forgotten by those whose paths had once crossed his.
He clenched his teeth hard, and before he could release the curses rising from the depths of his heart, everything collapsed. From beginning to end, he had never been given the chance to say what he truly thought, to vent, or even to leave behind a few final words.
Just as the young man had warned, the building collapsed, crushing the old man and burying him in darkness in the blink of an eye.
At the very least, it could be said that he left this world without pain.