Tradition

He entered the bar as though the night itself had dragged him in, an apparition of wasted flesh and stubborn breath. The door closed behind him with the finality of a coffin lid. He gave the bartender a nod: the silent salute of a regular ghost. Then he sat in the farthest corner, where shadows cling tighter than people ever did.

The ritual began. A beer, bitter as regret. A cigarette, acrid as memory. Smoke coiled upward like prayers no god would listen to. He drank and watched. Always watching. The bar was a theater, and he was the condemned man forced to sit through the play each night.

The young couple. They touched each other with hands that had not yet learned trembling. Their lips curled into laughter, their eyes into promise. They lived in a bubble of delusion, believing themselves immortal, untouchable. His chest clenched with a twisted envy. How dare they still believe in love? How dare they still glow in a world this rotten? Watching them was like staring at sunlight through filthy glass, blinding, unbearable. He wished to shatter them, just to prove the lie.

The group of friends. Youth incarnate, loud and shameless. Their joy was reckless, spilling like their drinks. They roared with the certainty that tomorrow belonged to them. He envied that arrogance, but his envy soured instantly into hate. They do not know yet. They do not know the collapse that waits for every smile, the betrayal folded inside every bond. He sat in silence, a prophet of ruin, despising them for their ignorance.

The colleagues. Three men with loosened ties, toasting to their own exhaustion. Their laughter was a performance, each punchline rehearsed in the dark alleys of an office. They were not free, they were drunk in chains. He sneered into his glass. You fools. You sell your lives by the hour and try to buy them back by the bottle. Cowards disguising fatigue as camaraderie. They disgusted him because he knew them too well. He had been one of them. He still was.

The other lonely man. Bent over his drink, staring into amber as though it held a salvation. Their eyes met. Recognition. It was like looking into a mirror that had learned despair. For an instant, he almost felt less alone. But loneliness is territorial, it does not share. He looked away, revolted, as though the other man’s existence made his own misery less unique, less sacred.

The beer went down, the cigarettes turned to ash, but the gnawing inside did not fade. He felt the serpent of envy curl tighter around his lungs. Why them, why not me? Why do they get laughter, touch, belonging, while I rot in silence? The answer came like a whisper he already knew: because you are unworthy.

He stood. The ritual was not complete. The final act waited.

In the bathroom’s trembling light, he drew the revolver. Cold, weighty, merciless. The chamber opened like a mouth hungry for fate. One round slipped in. Spin. The cylinder whirled, deciding his future in less than a second.

The gun pressed against his temple. His pulse thundered, his breath shredded. He felt both terror and relief, as if he had finally cornered himself into honesty.

Click.

Silence. The chamber spared him. The bullet kept its secret.

He looked at himself in the cracked mirror, eyes red, lips trembling, skin mapped with fatigue. He smirked, a bitter curve of the mouth that carried neither relief nor gratitude. Survival felt like mockery.

Stepping back into the night, he felt the air colder than before. Another day had been forced upon him. Another punishment, another dawn to envy what others had and to hate what he was.

For this was his tradition, not to live, not to die, but to return again and again to the edge, spared only to suffer the luxury of one more wasted breath.

He wanted to be in real versions of the groups.

He wanted a real love, real friends, real collegues, real loneliness.