I had just exited my office and I was driving slowly on the narrow streets with the fallen trash cans and broken street lamps. I was going to the grocery store that Jean worked in just as I did everyday since the night that I had met him. I didn't really understand why I had wanted to see him again and again but I had long since stopped questioning that strange feeling in me.

There was just something about Jean. Something different. I knew that the two of us were not alike in the slightest bit yet something told me that he could be the first person to really understand me if we knew each other better. I also wanted to understand him. For example, there was always this dreariness in his eyes no matter what it was that he was doing. I wanted to know its reason. I wanted it to disappear. I had known him for two months already but I had never once seen him smiling. Just what was he going through? What kind of life did he have? What kind of pain he was experiencing? What could I do to help?

One would wonder how I had started thinking like that for a cashier who worked in a terrible place that I wouldn't even turn to look at under normal circumantances but had entered one night.

I couldn't explain that one myself. Maybe it was because he seemed so sincere. Maybe it was because he didn't show those fake smiles that everyone else showed or tell the stupid lies that everyone else told when around me. Or maybe it was because he was the first one who had helped me out of free will and without expecting anything back from me.

I was born as the first and only son of Michael and Beatrice Bodt, the owners of one of the most well known and richest companies in the country.

pFrom the first day that I had opened my eyes, there were butlers, maids, servants and nannies all around me. They had practically raised me while my own parents went around the country to join meetings, events, charity parties and balls. I had been raised to inherit everything my family had and all the people around me had always pampered me to no end. Even after my sister Margaret was born, they had kept all the attention on me because I would be the boss one day.

I had spent my childhood studying with private teachers, getting ready to run the company and wondering when my mother and father would return from whatever event that they were attending. I hadn't had a single friend other than Eren who was the son of the doctor in the house but he had grown up to become the house steward and had started to address me as 'sir' like everyone else. Meanwhile, my sister had been raised as a perfect lady. Silent, well mannered, clever, beautiful but also distant from me.

I hadn't really known what family meant. I had been taught to call my mother and father with fancy titles and compliment them while eating with silver cutlery in name of etiquette as if we were strangers.

So, I had lived faking happiness and putting on false smiles on my face just like everyone I knew. Years later, I had finally started to work with my father after graduating from the private universty that I had attended. I had started assisting him in meetings and new projects. I had accepted to become the face of a few of them. I had even promised to marry Mina Carolina, the daughter of another rich bussiness man eventhough I was unwilling. I had started to play my role as my family and the people expected from me. I hadn't even thought about refusing anything my family had decided for me once. What would rebelling against them change anyway? I was born into that life. So I had let everything be. I had let the flow of life and fate take me to wherever it pleased. Everything had fallen into place as if my life was a novel written ages ago and I, the protagonist who had no power over the outcome of the events no matter what choice they made.

I had thought that everyone was the same. Fake, selfish, proud... Everyone I had met had befriended me because of my surname and the benefits it could bring to them. For a long time, I had assumed that it was how real friendship worked. I had known that there were good people like Eren but I had thought that they were too rare to find one by one. And that had made me just like them. Happy, but depressed on the inside. Smiling, but scowling behind that expression. A real saint like the people in the charity gatherings liked to say but someone who had to suppress the urge to strangle a few men and women everyday and keep his disgust against the humanity in check in real. Shortly: fake.

Just when I was fed up with it all, I had met someone different.

I had been driving in the middle of the night just a few hours before dawn after working on a new project for many hours in my office in the company building. I had decided to go around a little before returning home because I didn't get time to think and clear my head all too often. Before I knew it, two hours had passed already and I was so tired, so sleep deprived and so frustrated with the things going through my head that I had injured myself by accident for the first time in many years.

I had seen the '24 hours open' sign on a building that looked like a market a few meters ahead and I had went over there after pressing on the wound in my palm with my handkerchief. I had known that I needed something better to stop the bleeding before going to a hospital.

When I showed my hand to the cashier with the name tag that read 'Jean', his eyes had widened and he had run to get me first aid supplies. Then he had took care of my wound eventhough he hadn't had the slightest need to. He hadn't even accepted my money. But the thing that had surprised me the most was him not knowing who I was. He hadn't recognised me even when I gave him my full name. He hadn't smiled at me. Instead, he had scowled, frowned and talked to me openly. Something I had never witnessed before. I had acted in the only way I knew how to. Courteous and cheerful. But he hadn't bought the appearances. He hadn't cared and I had liked that.

I smiled at the thought of Jean. He was grumpy, forward, natural and he probably saw me as an idiot. He didn't like me. It was like he didn't like anyone. We were two men with opposite personalities from two different worlds but he was just like me internally.

I wanted to know him better. I wanted to be closer. I wanted him to like me. Because I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was starting to really enjoy someone's company and my smiles were turning genuine in front of someone else.

I had already learned so much about him from the small chats that I had with him over the register as I bought random things just to talk to him.

He was twenty five years old -I made sure to tell him he didn't look it-. He liked ramen and potato mash -I would certainly take him to a ramen place when he finally accepted to do something with me sometime-. His favorite color was red -I tried to wear red more often-. He worked everyday - which I wasn't sure why-.

Things like that.

Inwardly, I knew what was up with me but I wasn't sure if Jean had caught on anything. The feeling was spreading ever so slowly and occupying me day by day.

What would he think of me if he knew that I was... Would he want something like that? He clearly had some problems. Would he want my help? Would I be able to soothe him? Would I change anything for the better for him? Would I manage?

I took a deep breath and parked the car in front of the grocery store.

Only time would give me answers but I would certainly try my best. I had hope in Jean. He was different. He was good. And maybe, just maybe he would think the same way about me someday.