Four men were sitting at a table in the middle of the night. The air was thick with cigarette smoke; all of them were tense, rolling the dice at the fastest pace you have seen.
Four men who have been friends since school are shouting and laughing at each other. Occasionally, their noise reached such a peak that the night-shift workers at the nearby gas station would peer through the window, their expressions a mix of curiosity and concern.
You might think they were gambling away fortunes with those dice.
Nah.
Those 30-year-old grown-ass men were playing a game of Monopoly—a special Avengers Edition—but still a Monopoly.
N and M were quite calmer than the other two. They traded their cards, built some houses on the board, and waited for the red dice to determine the rest of the game.
On the other side, F and G needed to make a trade so they could stay in the game.
There was a problem, though.
While those two have been best friends since they were 7-year-old scrubs, when it comes to games and life views, they can be extremely competitive, and the outcome, explosive.
There was another problem as well. F was more stressed than usual, probably having gotten into a fight with his girlfriend before coming to the game.
And G didn’t have a blunt in his hands. G also hadn't won a game of Monopoly in 2 years; most times he didn’t care enough and went all-in, making dumb mistakes during negotiations.
But that time he wanted to have a decent run, to lose without selling himself short at least.
F made a trade proposal.
G said, "Alright, let's discuss it when it's my turn."
(When you obtain a color set on your turn, it gives you an advantage because you can instantly build houses.)
F refused. "It's now or never."
G went nuts.
"All these times I have been making trades without considering this advantage, and now you refuse my right to use it? Fuck it, let's both lose if you can't play the game fair"
They continued rolling the dice, mocking each other. But F made fun of G since he’s a loser.
The game ended; M won the game, G finished in second place, and F came in third. It didn’t matter, as in many cases in life, the first takes everything.
Then the crew switched to another game, Jungle Speed, a game that F usually wins. Things started more calmly, but in the first two games, N was the winner.
But those wins came because F made a crucial mistake in both cases, G was close to winning so he mocked him, saying he gave the win to N on purpose.
And then the situation escalated; after a lot of disrespectful words, G refused to play another game and threw the totem off the table.
"Fuck this shit, and fuck you, I am outta here."
G turned to M, "Let’s head home."
M said, "We can't go now; our food order is on its way here."
"I don't give a fuck; I am leaving right now." The others tried to stop him, but he was furious; he left indeed. It was raining outside, and G was in his summer clothes, but he didn't give a fuck about that either.
You see, the drowned don’t feel the rain.
What did the others think of this as G was walking home?
Maybe they thought that he overreacted.
Or maybe they figured that someone like G, who has been facing problems that don’t go away easily for about a year now, couldn't handle this.
Being in survival mode and seeing his choices not having the effects he expected despite his efforts and the risky choices he made to break his ceiling
A ceiling that was set low by his parents, school classmates, and his physical condition.
A ceiling that he's been trying to break all his fucking life.
Maybe, just maybe, he couldn't handle his childhood friend's mockery, not when they gathered so rarely.
Probably they won’t gather again to play board games, not soon at least.
And probably F, a guy who never apologizes, felt really bad because the next day he sent a video in their group chat, a sort of tribute video he made himself from pictures of G.
Humans are so weird, ain't they?
Until our next story,
Thank you for reading 🪄
