A Serenade for the Innocent 53 Dirty

There, right there! Observe the way that cashier personnel greeted Subject 1 when he entered the establishment. Let's rewind that, please. Intern, please rewind clip #6.

"Welcome, sir..."

Now, people wouldn't be so irked upon hearing such a low, monotonous, somewhat lazy-sounding greeting from a cashier in every business establishment. In fact, they might even think of it as a staple, something to be expected from someone who's manning the cashier of the capitalists. After all, who would be out there smiling in their own accord and beaming with naught but energy upon seeing a customer knowing that putting that much effort wouldn't give them more pay?

Definitely not Justin.

He is just one of those run-in-the mill cashier that all of us had encountered in our lifetime. He's one of the mediocre ones. As we all know, most of the people in the customer service industry would give mediocrity as their staple because they're simply not paid enough for them to treat all of their customers like gods.

However, Subject 1 is a special case, a different case.

Never in his life had he seen a passive cashier.

Let me explain.

Most of his life, Subject 1 stayed at home, and he would always get whatever he wants through online delivery services. Food, necessities, clothes, everything. He never found the need to leave his room, and frankly, he didn't need to leave his room. Outside his former house is dirty, dusty, muddy, noisy. Horrible! Disgusting! He would not wish to even lift a finger outside of his home. This was perhaps strengthened because his family nurtured this kind of behavior and tolerated it enough until it grew into a legitimate problem that plagued him until now.

Ladies and gentlemen, for the betterment of this part of the presentation, I would like to show the simplicity of Subject 1's fashion preferences. They were long-sleeved shirts, tracksuit, jogging pants, jeans, long socks, a face mask, different hats, and, most importantly, disposable gloves. Most of the clothes he wore are all cheap, although he came from a well-endowed, wealthy family. This was because, whenever he left the house, he would throw the clothes he wore straight to an incinerator that his parents willingly gave him upon his request.

While we were out there in the field to observe the behavior of the man, we found out that he never took his clothes off during sex, but we didn't really think that there was anything weird about this. Well, quite the contrary actually, some of us pointed out that they also liked having sex with their clothes on; it's just a preference. However, after a continued study of the man's life from his adolescence to his death, we found out that there are several bruises all over his body, all are self-inflicted. These all healed through time once he started living in the town's forest outskirts. We concluded that such injuries came from his neurotic desire to bathe almost ten times a day to rid himself of the dirt from the outside world. Thus, most of his earlier life, he spent not just merely in his room, he spent it in his bathroom.

For the most part, his parents weren't against this; they sometimes show their concern, but they couldn't resolve it because they can't control their own child. They cannot talk to him properly, and they are both forbidden from entering his room because, according to Subject 1 himself, they might be carrying the dirt of the outside world with them.

This further evolved because of his mother's preference for having a quiet house. In fact, the people in their home is not allowed to shout in their house; there is a limitation on how loud their mother permits them to be. From a young age, Subject 1 had been arduously taught that noise is the companion of a dirty man. Thus, as the man's condition grew, he just simply associated noise with dirt, and now, he resented noise because he thinks that it's just as dirty as everything else in the outside world.

After all, there's no noise in his room, it's all in the outside world.

I'll save you the minor details as to how his parents send his online deliveries to his room and how they clean them before giving it to him. I would also skip the other details about how he managed to make his room as noiseless as possible by tiptoeing and doing something with his walls. I think that minor details like those are not really relevant to us right now. What is relevant, however, is his life when he finally decided to leave his room.

You see, although other people might think that he doesn't care, it's actually quite the contrary. He cares a whole lot about what's happening to him, and more than anyone in this world, he wanted to fix himself. However, he didn't want to seek therapy for reasons that are not relevant to us at present, but he still wishes to rid himself of this trap that he's living in most of his life.

That was when he decided to leave the house without anyone's knowledge. He took a bit of his parent's money, he braved through all the dirt the world could offer and arrived at this quiet town after several mental breakdowns.

The town was twenty kilometers away from his home. Usually, if a person from his neighborhood wanted to go to this quiet village, it would take about a few hours at best for them to get there.

It took Subject 1 four days before he could even go halfway there.

Four days.

Two of them are nothing but mental breakdowns.

But he never retraced his steps.

He never went home.

Throughout this long journey, his parents did not look for him. Perhaps... They thought it was less problem off their shoulders. However, after a few months, they did file a report that he was missing, but they didn't press on; they just simply allowed it to happen. They moved on with their lives.

It was as easy as that.

More importantly, after a month of living in his van in the forest outskirt, the man realized something. The outside world is not that dirty, there's just a portion of the outside world that is dirty. This is not a part of that portion. This part of the town is quiet and gentle, it's clean and beautiful. The world around his van is a different world from the city.

It was not as clean as his room, but it was not as dirty as the city. In fact, he enjoyed the few imperfections around him. It was not as quiet as his room, but it was not as noisy as the city. Moreover, he found solace on the few bits of noises he could hear, such as the rustling of the wind and the tweeting of the birds.

It was imperfect.

But it was paradise.

And boy, did he loved this paradise.

Everyone was friendly! They would go to their farms, drive to their docks, walk to their businesses, interact with their neighbors, and live their happy lives. All of this may not be perfect, but everyone is happy.

This is where the problem started.

Well... 'Problem' is a bit too... Harsh? It's not really a problem, per se. It's just a preference brought by Subject 1's naivety.

You see, the people of the town sold their own products in their own stores in the marketplace. Therefore, these people had a particular pride in what they show their customers. Not to mention, these customers of theirs are their neighbors, their relatives, or their friends. Always, without fail, they would greet their customers excitedly with the enthusiasm of a child. Their genuine smiles show their confidence in themselves and their products. They worked hard to make this, and they worked hard to sell it all on their own.

They held their heads high always!

As the man grew out of his extreme disgust towards dirt and noise after a few months, he also encouraged himself to mingle with other people. Thus, the first and only type of customer service that he had ever seen in his life was in this quiet town.

If he wanted something back then, all he needed to do was to write it on a sheet of paper, slide it in the crevices under his door, ring his bell, and wait for his parents to take the paper where they would then buy or order the product for their son.

Not this time, though. Subject 1 cut the sleeves of his shirts, revealing the bruises and marks around his arms, and he even sliced off his jogging pants until it looked like shorts. He stopped wearing socks and masks. However, for some reason, he couldn't quite let go of his gloves yet, no, not quite yet, but he tried. He tried his hardest. However, even after many trials, the only thing he permits himself to do is to have one of his hands glove-free while he would still wear one on the other. He also stopped burning his clothes even if he used them outside of his home, and he started a habit of shouting from the top of his lungs every now and then while facing the mountains.

It was almost liberating for Subject 1.

He wanted to change himself, so he went to the marketplace and befriended many people. When he started doing his murder spree, he considered returning to his normal life as a shut-in, but he decided to go against it because it might attract unnecessary attention towards him.

This is where we lead back to the very beginning.

This is where the Justin problem starts.

You see, the man expected nothing less but the same enthusiasm he often saw from the people in the marketplace.

What he got is this tired, lazy passivity that he could only describe as loathsome and infuriating.

Oh, it was more than infuriating.

"Welcome, sir..."

He hated this greeting so much that the many years he spent living as a disgrace in his family's home returned to him in less than a blink of an eye.

All of it.

The entire history, the rest of the awful charade.

"Welcome, sir..."

It just irked him so much! How could anyone be so lazy and dumb and stupid and dirty and noisy and dirty and disgusting and dirty and lazy and dirty and dirty and dirty?

So fucking dirty!

It's all just so dirty!

"Welcome, sir..."

It's the perfect image of lousiness that he had never once encountered ever in his life! For him, enthusiasm is a 100% must in the service industry, and if anyone is not doing all that they got, then they might as well stop whatever it is they're doing.

"Welcome, sir..."

In that short time that the man spent standing there while looking at the cashier personnel with widened eyes, he had already started linking this response to the dirties of the dirt and the shittiest among shit. It's like just the mere sound of that greeting completely defeats the most disgusting place in the world. It's like all the trashes in the world were all dump within two lazy-sounding words.

"Welcome, sir..."

And then it rang and rang and rang in his mind. Suddenly, it was the noisiest thing that he ever had the misfortune of encountering. Not even the noise from a train could compete with how loud that greeting sounded in his head. It felt like every human being that existed and will exist in the future shouted those two simple words at him in unison, and they never stopped. It felt like every speaker in the world was at max volume, and they were all playing those same two words repeatedly, but they were not in perfect harmony; it sounded scattered, and it felt like it was everywhere.

"Welcome, sir..."

He hated this so much.

He hated it so much because, to him, it's the accumulation of everything he ever hated.

The greatest trash in the world and the noisiest sound ever is one simple thing, after all.

Mediocrity.

This just makes him so much more perfect, to be honest with you guys.

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This already guarantees that he would work the people below him to the bone until he saw them working with nothing but the utmost perfection that he had in his head.

After all, it's the only thing he knows.

There's no right, there's no wrong. This is it. This is all the service that he knows.

That's perfect for us!

And with that out of the way, let's talk about how he tortured Justin.

Chapter end