As if awoken by a sudden jolt of electricity, he jumped up from his bed.
He clearly had a nightmare, a pretty bad one at that.
Though it lacked monsters or other aspects that one would generally attribute to nightmares it still was rather terrifiying.
'Being stuck in a void, for all eternity.'
'No good I need to clear my head'
By this point slivers of sunshine were already beaming through the surrounding windows. It was evidently already morning, there was no need to go back to sleep.
He slowly got off from his bunk bed, careful not to wake the others, and slowly made his way to the shower.
On his way there he ran into a familiar face, of course being the young gentleman he was he made sure to greet them properly.
"Good morning Sister Maria."
"Good morning to you too, Ash."
"It's still a bit early, the others are still asleep. How come you are already awake?"
Though embarrased of still having nightmares at such an age, he still reluctantly answered the sisters question.
"I... had a nightmare, and the sun is up anyways so I don't see the problem with it."
"Haa.. guess it's fine, but make sure not to wake the others, you wouldn't want to ruin everyone else's time of rest just because yours was, right?"
"Right... sister." He said in a somewhat monotone voice.
Being a part of the church run orphanage came with having to be mindful of everyone, so Ash naturally understood such things even without the need to mention it.
With the two parting ways Ash quickly arrived at his destination, the shower room.
He naturally made his way to one of the nearby taps and quickly washed his face, as a way to wake himself up.
Looking up in the mirror what welcomed him was naturally himself, a 15 year old boy with unkempt ash grey hair and crimson eyes, his hair was also where his not too creative name of Ash came from.
Next he moved his hand around as if searching for something.
'Ahh.. I forgot my toothbrush.'
...
Soon the others woke up, and it was time was time for the day to truly begin. The day's at the orphanage were simple. The younger kids went to study while the older ones were sent to work minor jobs for the church. And Ash fell into the latter category, and today's job was news delivery.
Although most would not think of churches as places that would require many deliver jobs, here it was actually a bit different, as the church was the main distributor of news in the town of Blackheart.
As a small town in the middle of the wasteland, it was mostly cut off from most of the world. Of course Blackheart wasn't a special case, most of the towns and cities were pretty cut off from the rest of the world. This wasn't by choice of course, but had to do with the nature of the wasteland, which made developing the infrastructure difficult.
So simply put, atleast here in Blackheart the church was one of the few, if not the only places that was able to get news from the outside world. How it did was a secret, a well kept one, so much so that even the town officials had to rely on the church for their news.
With his job for the day decided Ash decided to head out, there wasn't a need to loiter around, the quicker he got the job done the quicker he'd be able to enjoy his free time. The church was actually pretty generous in this aspect.
The delivery places were decided by drawing lots and for today he had a total of three destinations, the town hall, a local news station and a small convenience store.
Today he caught the big fishes, having both the town hall and the local news station in his to do list.
Still it was a fairly simple matter and he'd probably be able to finish all the deliveries in 2-3 hours, which made sense as the church expected everyone to be back by lunch time.
After some thinking he decided on starting with the town hall getting the most difficult place out of the way first.
Deciding against using his bike he instead chose to go by foot as a way to get the daily exercise out out of the way.
Soon he arrived before the town hall, for the small town of Blackheart it was a fairly easily spottable as it was much larger than all the other buildings around.
He walked to the backdoor reserved for deliveries, but before he could even press the bell the door opened with a familiar face greeting him.
"Ash! It's you today. It has been a while, huh?"
"Yeah, right." Ash said somewhat flustered.
'It indeed has been a while'
Due to pure coincidence, it has been a whole 9 months since his last delivery to the town hall, it seems others had more "luck" getting the town hall as their destination lately.
"Sooo... got news for us?"
"Obviously."
With a smooth action Ash reached into his backpack and took out a small tablet simply labelled "town hall".
"Here ya go." He quickly handed over the tablet, and turned around as if to leave.
"Well, my job here is do..."
But before he could turn around to leave the familiar face spoke up again.
"Why, don't we have a small chat since it been so long?"
Ash grimaced, but quickly hid it, and replied with a simple anwer.
"No."
"....."
There was a moment of awkward silence between the two, but realising his mistake Ash spoke up once again.
"I still have a lot of deliveries to do, so I really need to go, sorry."
"Guess I can understand, then maybe next time?"
"We'll see."
Ash was finally able to leave, and was able to let out a sigh of relief.
'I really didn't want to get stuck there again, ugh... the last time was... really painful.'
The man with a familiar face whose name Ash didn't even know wasn't a bad person, it was quite the opposite, he could be said to be friendly, overly friendly. The last time Ash was here he got stuck here listening to his ramblings for multiple hours, and simply put he wanted none of that.
'Being in a bad headspace in the morning really ruined things for today, but I guess I navigated that decently well. I think?'
To be honest his 9 month absence wasn't mere coincidence, he had purposefully made it so his name wouldn't be selected for the town hall, but today he forgot to do it switch the slots around, and as luck would have it he got assigned to the town hall.
'One step closer to my work being over.'
The delivery at the news station went smoothly as the people there were professionals and knew to mind their own business. So Ash wasn't held up there for long and it was soon time for the final delivery.
Now he was standing before an ordinary looking convenience store sitting in a secluded corner of the town.
'It's time for the final delivery.'
Without much hesitation, Ash went ahead and pushed the store's doors open and headed into the store.
"I'm here Granny!." Ash shouted, and soon a set of footsteps could be heard coming towards him.
Soon a somewhat haggard figure appeared before Ash. This someone was Granny Agate.
"Ohh, Ash it's so nice to see you."
Ash quite liked this granny as she was easy to get along with. Not too loud, not overbearing and she even gave him snacks sometimes. She was just the type of person he liked.
"So did you bring the news?"
Without even saying a word he quickly took out the last tablet from his backpack and quickly handed it her.
Soon as the tablet landed in her hand Agate started to scroll though it till her eyes stopped on a certain article.
'Guess there are some interesting news, nothing I didn't expect, the town was a bit too giddy it must be something major'
"What sort of news did I bring?Wait... is it something from Primus?"
"...In a way I suppose it is."
Primus was the name of the megacity closest to Blackheart, almost all of the towns supplies came from there. And although it was the closest, even by car the journey there would still take multiple days, and on foot who knows how long it would take.
"The SCC is coming Tuesday next week."
"The SCC!?"
Ash was shocked, the arrival of the SCC would impact a lot of the younger people in Blackheart, naturally Ash was included in that aswell.
"So does it say why they are coming?"
"They are here for the recruitment... I guess it's about that time."
'So it's already time for the recruitment period.'
"So are you excited Ash? This is your opportunity to make it into the big leagues." Granny exclaimed with great enthusiasm. And looked towards Ash with much anticipation.
"Not really. You know I don't have great ambitions, I'm perfectly content with just staying in Blackheart, I'm not that interested in going to Primus."
"You said "not that" so you atleast have a bit of interest."
'Of course, I have, but the chances of me actually being qualified were thin and even then going into SCC..'
The arrival of the SCC meant an opportunity for recruitment. The SCC would sometimes go around in wasteland towns and recruit young people into the corporation. Of course getting in required passing the qualification test, which not many would pass. This test after all wasn't something that tested ones knowledge, but one's innate potential.
"Just forget it Granny, I said I'm not interested."
"Well, your loss I suppose. Though just giving it a try costs nothing." She grumbled under her breath.
"Anyways I gotta get going."
"So soon you just arrived, why don't you stay a bit longer and entertain this old lady a bit more."
"I'm sorry Granny, but..."
"I understand, go on no need for excuses, I won't try to make you stay. Then till next time."
Ash was about to leave the store when Agate suddenly shouted after him.
"And incase you change your mind about the SCC stuff, just make sure to tell me alright?"
"Okay Granny, though I doubt it will happen if it does I'll make sure to tell you."