That thought was pondered in my head till the next morning. I got off work, heading home I tried boarding a bus, none were coming my way, I was sitting at the bus stop waiting, only to hear a voice too strange to be familiar, "Maksim Popov?".
I looked up and noticed a car stopped, and realized someone inside was saying my name. I was not sure so I still sat at the bus stop and tried looking at my phone, unsureof what I was trying to avoid, then I heard it again but with a chuckle, "Maksim Popov". The sunlight was too bright for me to look up quickly but I noticed a figure step out from an expensive-looking car coming close to where I sat so I forced myself to look out and that person was there, so geeked with a huge smile on their face that I was beginning to try hard to place and then he said once again, "Maksim Popov".
It then dawned on me, this is him, that boy in my high school, the one who made me lose my scholarship, the one who made the school expel me, the one who opened the unending unfortunate cycle of my supposed love life. It was Viktor Chernov. I immediately stood up, for a reason I do not know, and looked at him to make sure I was not mistaken. He kept chuckling, touching, and shaking my shoulders like we had a good past relationship.
I awkwardly shook his hands off my shoulder and he immediately switched up from laughing to a familiar psychotic smile I thought I would never have to remember again. "You are still weird?, Maksim" he said to me while brandishing his car keys in my face.
"What do you mean?" I said back at him, and he looked shocked when I spoke back but he shrugged it off.
"Ok, you are still weird, where have you been, where are you going, I can drop you off, I don't have anything keeping me busy right now, let's catch up" he said while proceeding to shake my shoulder again. I felt so irritated and impulsely pushed him off me. He then came up to me and pushed me to the bus stop seat saying "This is how you ruined your miserable life this boy, I'm trying to be nice to your sorry self",he then spat on the floor and told me to grow up while walking back to his car.
I tried to find my composure on the bus stop seat after this encounter with Viktor. Never in a hundred years would I be prepared for this incident that happened seconds ago. How does one prepare for a recurring trauma? How does one prepare to never see the person who contributed to the shape of ruin one's life holds?
The fact that he is so giggly, so comfortable to even touch me and so nonchalant to the fact that he ruined my life.
He even seemed successful, like he was not the terrible monstrosity of a teenager I knew. Why do good things happen to bad people? I am not the best morally inclined person in this whole world, being good or bad is just a label for us humans to just maybe morally incapacitate our abilities but I could not help but think about why he does not deserve this life I am leading.
I think about four buses that have stopped and driven by and how I have lost an earlier opportunity to get home and have a good nap but I don't think I would be able to even shut my eyes after this horrible encounter.
Why did he have to see me? Why did he even recognize me? I guess I look the same as I was young and in this situation, that's the worst thing…Why did I have to be here at this moment? Why did I not shut him off? Why did he feel like I was the same as years ago? I feel like I should have been meaner, in a way he does not feel comfortable locking eyes with me? Why was I so weak? Why am I this weak??
My home was the same, still, it felt strange, it felt like I belonged in better places, like I deserved better. I have not even had the time to go to the bank because I have been so busy, I got a mail saying I had received money, the kind that gets bank officials suspicious especially if they have known you to be a pauper who is a little bit weird for keeping his chicken change for safety at banks but I had gotten paid, for something, I later got the knowledge that it was Leonid, it was an upfront payment for the "little party at the bar" as one of his bodyguards called it when he told me after I closed the bar after my completed shift.
Telling myself I can fall asleep after all these things that have happened would be telling myself a blatant lie. I went down to the floor of my apartment building, where there's a little convenience store owned by an elderly woman. I do not think she has companions, she was always alone and quiet, she does not even speak when somebody comes to get anything, she just stands up and gets it for you, while collecting the money with her other hand, the right hand, sometimes she leaves you to find whatever it is you came to get and if you don't find it, whether it is there or not, she would not stop you from leaving without getting anything. I imagine that delinquent children might steal her goods from time to time, but it takes good strength, time, and care in the world to even try to stop or discipline the kids who come here to steal.
It is already afternoon, so I got little snacks from her and booze that will shut my eyes for at least four hours before I prepare for another round of ethanol smell, roamy watchful eyes, loose-lipped drunkards, recording and calculations of figures, figures, and more figures that I would never be able to explain, and when I spoke to Leonid about it, he said not to worry, so I don't, honestly I don't really want to know too much about the dirty money that is coming into this bar, so I throw the snacks in my mouth and gulped down the booze as quick as I could so that it works fast. It took an hour but I knocked myself out.