The cursor blinked on the screen. It mocked him.
"Thank you for applying. We regret to inform you…"
Aren closed the tab before finishing the sentence. He didn't need to. He'd memorized rejection phrasing by now. Every polite way the world could say you're not enough, now fuck off. Some didn't even bother sending rejections anymore. They just ghosted.
Another rejection. Another night.3:27 a.m. glared from the clock.
He rubbed his face, feeling the grease on his skin and the exhaustion under it.
"God, I'm such a hypocrite."
He blamed the system.Connections. Luck. Professors. Recruiters.
But the mirror in the laptop screen told the truth: he'd coasted.
"If only I'd started earlier… built some projects for the resume. Finding a job after graduation wouldn't be this hard."
LinkedIn glowed open like a wound.
"Landed my dream internship! Hard work pays off!"
Another post. Another smile. Another fraud.He scrolled faster, bile rising.
"Hard work, yeah sure buddy. Or maybe your cousin works there."
He laughed without humor, a thin sound that dissolved in the dark.
His phone rang.
Mum.
He stared at the name for a long time before answering.
"Hello?"
"Aren, son… can you send a bit this month? The moped's dying, and it's too much for your father to handle at this age. Everyone else's sons are doing so well, you know—they're buying cars for their parents now. We'd find an old and cheap one. Your cousin knows a guy."
He closed his eyes.
"Mum, I told you, I haven't found anything yet."
"But you're abroad! Those big companies, you must be getting paid something. You studied so hard."
Her voice cracked between pride and pleading. He hated that sound, the sound of someone trying to stay proud while begging.How could he bring himself to tell her that studying alone wasn't enough? That you needed connections, good projects, and luck. Luck that seemed to have a personal grudge against him.
"We just thought… maybe if we had a small car, things would be easier. You know your father's knees…"
He muted the mic for a second, pressing his forehead against the desk.
They had spent everything to send him here.And now they wanted help, as if it were his turn to save them.
But he had nothing.
And deep down, a darker thought twisted through him:If I were an orphan, maybe I'd actually be free.
No calls. No guilt. No needy voices projecting their dreams onto him.
He imagined a life without the weight of their expectations.No "ideal son." No "referral from uncle."Just him—doing something, anything—blogging, making videos, chasing what he wanted instead of what he owed.
"I'll see what I can do, Ma," he said finally.
"You're a good boy," she said, and hung up before he could argue.
The line clicked dead, leaving him alone again with the hum of his laptop fan.
He whispered, "Maybe I'm not a good anything."
He shut the laptop. The glow vanished.City lights leaked through the blinds, soft and distant.
He lay back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet throb of his thoughts.
What if everything just… stopped?The jobs, the calls, the pretending.
A sky without stars. A silence without expectation.
For a fleeting second, that sounded beautiful.
"Maybe the problem isn't only my lack of drive and talent," he murmured."Maybe the whole thing's rigged."
His chest rose and fell. A tired smile tugged at his lips.
"God, I hate this messed up world. I wish some goddamn meteor would crash or something."
He laughed softly, bitterly, before sleep finally claimed him.
Outside, the city buzzed, oblivious—a machine still turning, unaware that soon,it would break.