Chapter 27 Lies
Klaus's Memory:
Klaus dreams that he is back in the world he once knew. In the dream, he stands in the middle of a road where traffic passes, and the cars drive through his body, leaving him unharmed.
He is merely a phantom in his dream.
Klaus looks up and sees a sign for an "Uncle Tom" fast-food restaurant, where he once worked. A man dressed in a heavy doll costume is handing out flyers in the scorching sun to passersby, some of whom ignore him, some of whom take the flyers and throw them straight into the trash.
He does not stop, but continues to hand out flyers until all the flyers in his hands are gone. Just as he is about to take off his hood and take a break, a middle-aged man with the air of a boss walks out of the fast-food restaurant, hands him a fresh stack of flyers, and tells him to finish.
So he works until nightfall, and the man is so tired that he leans against the railing by the side of the road while he struggles to remove the doll's hood.
Klaus sees a familiar face. It is him. His name is Nick, and he is a regular guy who works at a fast-food restaurant.
Nick is driving home from work when he stops as he passes a jewelry store. He parks his bike on the side of the road and tries to stay away from the entrance to the jewelry store, otherwise, the clerk inside would have called security and thrown the battered bike in the trash if he saw the entrance was blocked.
He lingered for a few seconds outside the door and finally summoned the courage to enter.
"No, don't do anything stupid," Klaus spoke to the man from behind, but he could not hear him at all.
The clerk in charge of the reception gave Nick a casual introduction to some of the store's jewelry, merely wanting to get the poor man out of the way.
Eventually, Nick picked out the smallest diamond ring in the store, which nearly cost him months of his salary.
Klaus watched Nick as he carefully slipped the beautifully wrapped diamond ring into his pocket, his face smiling and his eyes full of anticipation.
"Fool," Klaus said.
Klaus followed Nick to the apartment, where he watched as Nick excitedly opened the door to an apartment where his girlfriend, Susan, lived.
Susan gave him the keys to the apartment to make it easier for him to take care of her dog, Juice, which Nick walked whenever he was free, but Juice only ever called Nick for a drink.
The door to the apartment opened, and Klaus watched as Nick entered the room. The moment he pushed open the door to Susan's bedroom, he saw her lying beneath a man's body, moaning.
They had a heated argument in which Susan, wrapped in a sheet, complained that Nick's income was too low to meet her material needs.
The strange man, who was slowly dressing, paid no attention to Nick's curses, and the man's eyes, as he looked at Nick, were full of scorn and contempt.
The man left a watch behind before departing, which he told Susan was her tip. Nick angrily chased the man for his watch, and when he saw the man about to get into a Mercedes, he pulled him out of the driver's seat by the collar.
They scuffled together and soon someone called the police. When the police arrived, they took Nick away. The rich man hired a lawyer and threatened to sue him, and when Nick got out of prison, he never found Susan again.
And the diamond ring he had so carefully prepared for his proposal of marriage was lost in the struggle with the rich man.
It was as if he had lost everything.
Nick has been sitting on the side of the road lately, looking at the people passing by, wondering what he had done wrong. It's clearly not his fault. Why should he be the one to be punished in the end?
He worked hard to please his girlfriend, but in the end he got a heartless betrayal.
He thought that by paying for his sincerity, he could gain the real affection of others, but shit, his sincerity was not worth a dollar in the eyes of others.
No matter how hard he worked, he was never paid as much as someone else's watch or shirt.
It is simply an unfair world.
"Fool, some things are predetermined from the start," Klaus stood in front of Nick and said, "We're all sheep in cages waiting to be slaughtered."
Nick's figure grew dim, everything about him began to blur, and a haze took the place of everything.
"Why do you want to remind me of those damn pasts?" Klaus muttered to himself in the haze, "Women, lies."
"The rules of this world are plunder. Only by becoming stronger can you have everything."