Destiny. Fate. Predeterminism.
Words used unironically in Greek tragedies and melodramas aired way past the average student’s bedtime. A gimmick for street-side fortune tellers and a scapegoat for ruffians not brave enough to take matters into their own hands.
V never believed in that bullshit and he has no plans to do so in the future. It all sounded fake to him, anyway.
Sure, he believes in happy endings and perfect mates - he had seen those enough times with his own eyes, but not destiny. No, sir, not him, not today.
Saying that one’s life was left to destiny was the easy way out, a ghost to bear the world’s grudges.
If a thing such as destiny is real, he asked his English teacher one Monday morning after learning about Oedipus Rex, then is free will a hoax?
He asked his mom too, later that night, as they were cuddling on the couch, a low-budget action-comedy movie playing on the TV. The surprise that flashed in his mom’s eyes showed that she never expected such a question from her youngest, but it quickly melted into a warm smile.
If there was nothing bigger than ourselves, she gently caressed hair out of his eyes, bigger than you, me, our noisy family … life would be so dull, wouldn't it?
He didn’t quite get an answer but stopped asking nonetheless, pushing the responsibility of unearthing the secrets of the universe to people who had too much time to think. A child wasn’t meant to think about things bigger than his family, he figured. He had homework, and training, and four older brothers who wouldn’t let him do anything without their supervision.
No longer that child, he sat at the cafe with bright sunlight shining through the windows. It was too early for this to be a dream, too heartfelt to be a joke. A man that he had only known for less than 36 hours- an alpha from a major corporation, no less - just told him that destiny exists.
Worse is that he was intervening.
He was the crazy man trying to cross the highway when there was an ambulance carrying a pregnant woman on the way to the hospital.
It all sounded so ridiculous that he didn’t even have the energy to get mad.
He asked the Alpha to repeat everything he said, just in case this was the day his ears decided to stop working.
“Yesterday, an artist caught the eye of a famous editor here. The coffee that I asked you to let go was the key that would unlock her fortune.”
It didn’t make sense. “How would a cup of coffee lead to an artist’s fortune? If it did, all the artists that regularly came here would’ve been famous by now.” He voiced his honest thoughts, taunting for the situation to turn even more bizarre.
“I didn’t know as well until I was here. Because the artist didn’t hold the cup properly, her works and sketches came tumbling to the floor. The editor helped her pick it up, unknowingly tucking one into his files.”
It was true. Caoli told him this morning about a meek girl spilling all her stuff on the floor yesterday because she held the cup by her teeth instead of how all the normal folks did it. Miraculously, the cup of coffee was the only one that came out of the debacle intact.
“But how did you know one slipped into the editor’s stuff?” V decided this was the most pressing question at the moment.
“The revelation is stronger if I am at the place of Fate.” Echo said all this with an impassive face, not at all deterred by how he sounded like a man recruiting for a cult.
“What revelation? Are you some freaking oracle or some shit?” Is the world ending? The Omega barely managed to stop himself from asking.
“If you want to know that,” he pulled out another stack of papers from god knows where and slid it across the table towards V. “You have to sign another one.”
V eyed the non-disclosure agreement with trepidation, unsure if he was ready to have his questions answered. Maybe this is what his mom talked about - things bigger than him and their noisy family. Maybe he was about to know something that wasn’t exactly good for him, something that would land him on the chopping board, something that would make him wake up at night trembling and grasping for a lifeline.
He quickly signed the papers before his mind could fall deeper into the abyss. Curiosity killed the cat but V was no pussy. If he wasn’t ready now, then he wouldn't be ready at all even if tomorrow came.
Echo opened his mouth and as V hung on to every word, he gradually understood that the knife that came for the cat’s neck was sharper than he ever thought it could be.
--
Of course, he wasn't stupid. V didn't immediately believe it when Echo started unraveling the threads of mystery that held the order of mankind in place. There was no way that one man, let alone a whole bloodline, supposedly kept the whole world in the dark.
He knew he wasn't stupid yet he found himself zoning out when he was supposed to be watching his favorite anime, ruminating the conversation that apparently only lasted for 30 minutes. It felt like forever in his memories.
If I breached the NDA and spread this all over, a daring idea popped when the gears in his head finally slowed down, would I be famous as a conspiracy nutjob?
He could almost picture it - his silver hair and solemn face on the 7 p.m. broadcast, headlines in big, bold letters that read:
OMEGA MALE CAUSES CHAOS: ARE HUMANS PRISONERS TO THEIR FATE?
His mother, bless her, would be sobbing in the arms of his father, wondering where she went wrong with her youngest. Maybe his first and third brother would be there to comfort her and keep the family from falling apart. His fourth brother would be running around beating up those who talked badly of him, while his second brother would be busy trying to save him from being sued. He did, after all, break the contract.
It was chaos but his imagination was limited to how it would affect their family. The world to him was only as big as their home at any rate.
It was also possible that nothing would change. Just like how he was now, people would think, I'm not stupid, there's no way that's true, and simply move on with their lives.
If it is revealed the path has been upside-down all along, what else can you do but keep walking?
V tossed and turned on his brand-new couch, turning his back to the TV once the familiar closing credits rolled.
There's no use in thinking too much about it, his all-purpose solution surfaced once more. I'll just sleep and tomorrow, it will be like nothing happened.
That night, as he felt the intimate embrace of slumber pull him deeper, he affirmed that his head must truly be empty. If it wasn’t, there was no way the Alpha's words could've echoed inside.
--
For the following days, the so-called truth lingered in his mind, whispering promises of fortune whenever he had to make a decision. He knew the system now, he could play the game of life and come out on top.
He could, but was it really that easy to manipulate? He was not the scheming type to begin with - it involved too much planning ahead, too much accounting for variables, too much analyzing the situation.
It was all too much for him who takes 6 hours to watch a thriller movie because he kept pausing it from the overstimulation of suspense.
V told Caoli that he signed an NDA when she asked, providing him no avenue to ease the weight he was carrying. He didn't want to divulge any information, but there was a tingle on the back of his head, a little parasite questioning his sanity.
If it wasn't true, why did everything lock into place?
If it was true, does that mean the good people deserved the bad things that happened to them and the bad people earned the good things as well?
If it wasn't true, then why is a coincidence never really a coincidence?
If it was true, then is there truly justice in the world?
How sturdy is the beam that holds the balance of the world?
It must be pretty delicate, he concluded, considering that it needs a group of people to 'recalibrate' it every now and again.
After 2 weeks of agonizing over it, V acknowledged that there may be more than one truth to exist, and it wouldn't hurt as long as he does not act on anything absolute.
So what if destiny exists?
If it's his, he just has to be in the right place, at the right time. At least, that's how it was explained to him.
To be exact, the Alpha said:
The choices that people make in life build up their karma, their fate, their fortune. This fate will come to them so long as they are in the right place, at the right time. If they are not there to receive it, the universe will shift itself to deliver it, twisting both their fate and everything around it. Like a parcel that's being transported from one place to another, the more it passes through the hands of workers who grow more tired with every passing second, the more the package is broken and bent.
My predecessor and I make sure that nothing goes wrong, especially the 'big' deliveries.
But you, V, seem to have a talent for being a porch pirate.
