Chapter 140. Checking Out After a Free Breakfast. (3/3)

“I’m just collecting souvenirs for your mother. I’m sure she will like them.” This wonderful pillow, how could anyone hate such a wonderful thing? I don’t think I could easily give it up to her though. We might have to share it. As for the towel, it was just something extra on the side. 

“No way. I can’t see that happening at all. She’s definitely going to chew you out.” Alicia, her own daughter, was the one who said so.

“Just wait and see. I’m definitely not wrong.”

Having said that, it was time for us to get dressed and check out. “We should check out now. Get dressed in some casual clothes for now. You can change into your school uniform after you leave the premises. It would definitely raise some eyebrows if you came out dressed in your school uniforms or together with me. I’ll leave now on my own, check out, and you two can go to school without me. Just change into your school uniforms inside a public restroom or something.”

“You’re not going to school with us?” Alicia asked.

“No.”

“Are you planning to skip again?”

“Naturally.”

“That’s not good, you know. What if you accumulate too many absences and are held back a year because of it?”

“I’ve already made arrangements with the school so that doesn’t happen. As long as I at least show up and pass all my tests, midterms, and finals, and complete whatever assignments or projects the teachers give us, I’ll be allowed to graduate.”

Not that I cared, but if I found myself in a situation where I needed another job, having that stupid piece of paper saying I graduated high school might come in handy should they request proof I really did graduate. Just saying you graduated was usually enough for jobs that only listed completion of high school as a requirement for the position. As far as I was aware, most of those low-end jobs in this country didn’t care very much as long as you could do the work.

Mid to high-end jobs were a completely different story though. They required all sorts of fancy certifications and specializations. It was just mind-numbing how even the most simplistic jobs required such things.

The days of ‘will train’ were pretty much gone for those types of jobs. You could either hit the ground running or you were tough out of luck. Every single job had some sort of specialized software for them, if you weren’t experienced with it already, then too bad. 

Some companies basically expected a newbie who knew next to nothing about the company to know exactly what complicated software and programs they used in advance and get good at it beforehand. They might not even post such information in the job listing either, which made it even more painful. 

If you called and asked, the person you got through to likely didn’t even know the answer to your questions either. They were just as clueless and useless, their only responsibility was to answer the phone after all. 

If they connected you to HR, from what I’d personally experienced, they didn’t know jack shit and were out of the loop as well. Companies had reached the point where the software and programs were personally tailored to meet their demands by software engineers who worked for them or were outsourced.

It was hell, truly hell out there. And it would only get worse in the future as everything grew even more complicated and convoluted. There were days in the future where I wondered how civilization hadn’t collapsed from how overly complicated and complex everything had become.

It was like people forgot what the word simplicity meant.

It was complex just for the sake of being complex. Just to make it harder for the average unspecialized all-rounder to get their foot through the door. Complex things were simplified and built upon to become complex again. The process repeated itself several layers deep until it reached a point where things were simplified but you had no idea regarding the inner workings of that mysterious black box.

You only knew if you put something into it, you’d get a certain expected result out. That was the process of electrical engineering. In a sense, the development of circuits was the perfect embodiment of the state of the jobs in the country.

A professor once taught me that every known phenomenon in the world could be represented in the form of circuitry. That professor’s words have always stuck in the back of my mind ever since that day. I will never forget them.

With my bulging bag on my back, I left the duo behind in the room and approached the front desk receptionist.

“Excuse me, I’m here to check out from room 1210.”

“Alright, one moment, please. Let me just pull up your reservation really quick and get you checked out.”

“It should be under Irene Sorayuki.”

“Alright.”

The receptionist picked up the phone and spoke to someone.

“Yes, that’s right, room 1210 is checking out.” They hung up after saying that.

Right then, Rosa and Alicia walked past me with their jackets over their casual clothes and exited the hotel without any problems.

It felt like the receptionist was stalking me out. They’d taken notice of the bulging bag on my back. The person they’d spoken to on the phone was definitely a cleaning lady.

After the receptionist took a brief ten-second call and hung up, she asked, “Would you like a copy of your receipt?” It seemed there were no problems with the room. So they had checked it out. It was a good thing I took those extra precautions.

“Yes, please.”

She printed out the receipt and handed it over. I scanned through the bill and found no problems with it. The total wasn’t incorrect. Irene had saved us money on the room and gotten the single bed at $120 for the night. However, after taxes and the cost for the room service last night, it came up to $180 altogether.

Well, it was within an acceptable level of what I could tolerate.

I bid the receptionist a good day and departed. I used the ATM on my way out to withdraw the money to pay Irene back in cash. I took an envelope from the machine and put the cash inside then headed over to a bus stop nearby. It was across the street from where Rosa and Alicia waited for theirs.

Alicia waved at me in a friendly fashion.

I normally ignored such greetings but when it came to her it felt hard to do so. I awkwardly returned her greeting by raising my hand to stomach level and waved back.

She covered her mouth to try and hide her laugh. It looked that awkward, huh? I’d never get used to such mundane daily interactions with others. It just wasn’t my thing and didn’t mesh well with my gloomy personality.

I did my best, okay? I really tried. I tried really hard, but it still looked weird! Actions that looked so natural for others just looked alien when I replicated them. Unless I became the embodiment of a character I envisioned in my mind, it would always turn out that way.

I could only do things naturally when I was putting on one of my acts. Honestly, after I started writing for long enough as an author, deep down, I knew I probably had the ability to land a few jobs as long as I became the embodiment of one of the characters I’d formulated in my head. But… I just couldn’t do it.

I’d have to keep up that sort of act from then on, it would be too mentally taxing and draining. That was why I never did such a thing.

You can do it if you try. That was the go-to line for those braindead happy-go-lucky people whose jobs were their identity. But what if trying in such a manner only made you hate yourself. You’d become exactly like the people you hate. People who were willing to work themselves into their graves for the employers who didn’t truly give a shit about them.

People who only existed for their jobs and nothing else. What was the point of living such a pathetic lifestyle? If you one day found yourself in a position where you could no longer work or where you were unreasonably fired without a reason, what would you do then?

Since I couldn’t understand such a mindset, on a subconscious level, I instinctively rejected their way of life. It was the block in my mind that would not allow me to put on a flawless act those people would not see through. They… disgusted me.

Irene wasn’t that sort of person. For her, work was simply a means to take care of her children. She had something precious to her. She wouldn’t be lost if she one day lost her job. She’d immediately move on and find a new one if she had to.

People like her, I respected.

But… I didn’t have anything like that. The only thing I had was writing. To me, a job was simply something I could use to survive on my own in this world and enjoy my time writing. It wasn’t something I considered a big part of my life. I wouldn’t kill myself for those people and bend over backward to please their every little demand. I wouldn’t destroy my health with overtime hours to meet a deadline the way they implicitly expected you to do.

As soon as my shift was over, I’d be out the door. I was there to work, not to hand my entire life over on a silver platter to satiate someone else’s greed and lust for money.

These were all problems with me that made me a defective failed product of society’s clockwork system. At some point in the manufacturing process, I broke. I was a broken existence, irreparably so, from society’s perspective at least. 

But I didn’t care, what’s wrong with being broken? What’s wrong with not fitting into the established norm society has constructed for us? As long as you are fine with it yourself, who cares what they think of you?

Thus, I live my life however I please. I won’t blindly chase after whatever their idiotic notion of success or happiness is. I will simply struggle for myself, my own survival. Even if it’s all the way at the very bottom.

I don’t enjoy living in this world the way they have created it, but I can enjoy the world I see, the way I perceive it.

Life is what you make of it.

Those words are all too true.

It is not what others want you to make of it.

I had such irresponsible thoughts on the bus ride home.

When I got back home, I slid the envelope with money under Irene’s door and put away the food I’d brought back from the hotel in the fridge.

I took out all the free stuff I’d taken from the hotel and dumped it out on the bed. I hugged the pillow and slept until it was time for my shift at work. The girl’s interviews would be conducted during my shift in the managerial office at the back of the store.

Apparently, the one and only Owner was conducting 15 minutes in-person interviews at the main store throughout the day until 4:30 PM. Rosa and Alicia were the last two she’d interview for the day. 

She typically avoided my time slot like the plague. She could have done it at the second store, but for some reason, she purposely selected the main store. It made me a bit nervous.

Why did she even personally handle the hiring process? Just let one of the managers do it for you during the day. Was it because you wanted to make sure they were all pretty in person with your own eyes? Did you think your managers would pick people at random even if they didn’t meet your standard of attractiveness?

What’s with you, Owner! Why are you so superficial! I get it’s a business decision, but still!

Where is the justice for gloomy people like me who aren’t as attractive in this world?