"Get him!"
Maru ran and ran. His heart pumping, his lungs burning, all while the rain poured. He couldn't remember the last time he ran like this. He tried to recall the memories of his life up until now, yet not a single moment was worth remembering.
A loser. He had been called that his entire life. By the time he was 15, the word became a permanent label. He guessed that to the bullies in his life, it was a glowing neon sign on his back and above his head that read: Please, bully me.
Still, he ran.
He was running from loan sharks. He thought he found a way out. A get-rich-quick scheme. Yet here he was. It's so insidious how life can flip. One moment you're behind a phone screen doom-scrolling, or cramped in your room reading manga or novels, and the next moment, you're being chased down to your death by loan sharks.
'I was such an idiot! A fucking idiot!'
Maru felt his body growing sluggish. The fatigue of constantly running quickly caught up to him. Yet he moved, he wouldn't stop, he wouldn't dare die here. Not in some back-city alley, wearing Spider-Man briefs, hell no.
Can you imagine the stories? 10 years from now, he'll be the center of a "remember when" conversation between buddy cops.
***
"Huh. Looks like the kid was a fool."
"I know, right. Trusting loan sharks in this day and age?... Not to mention, the kid was found stripped down to his boxers."
"So?..."
"He had Spider-Man undies on."
Laughter ensues.
***
Maru shook the thought away.
'Hell no, I ain't going out like that!'
So, his motivation for escape quickly came back, shooting strength through his body, and to his legs.
The burst of energy only lasted for a moment before he pulled something and rolled his ankle.
"Ack!"
He fell, his knee busted against the cruel asphalt. He rolled over in pain, wincing, then whining. His entire leg, from his cramped thighs to his busted knee to his rolled ankle, was ruined. He curled like a fetus, shaking as he clutched his leg closely.
"There he is!"
The voice of the loan shark snapped him out of it. The pain temporarily pushed aside by adrenaline, he gritted his teeth and pushed up.
"GRAHH!"
Back on his feet now, he began to move. He had to basically pull his leg with each hop and step, but he wasn't slowing down, not for them, not for anybody.
No good memories. That's what he told himself. But he has one good memory.
---
"Maru. You're a sweet boy. You always sit alone, away from others, yet even though you cause no trouble for anyone, it always seems to find you."
A sweet woman with a warm embrace. He couldn't remember her face. He must have been 4 or 5 when this happened. Yet he remembered her voice, her warmth, her tone, her motherness.
Often, he dreamt of this woman. Because having been born an orphan, this was the only woman he could remember calling mother.
For a loser with no dreams or goals of his own. For a loser that's just thinking of surviving the day, and not the next, she was motivation. A driving force.
---
"Trouble truly does... always find me."
He had dug deep into his memories, yet that didn't matter to men who worshipped wealth and cash. The loan sharks had long caught up to him.
Maru lay slack against a brick wall, knee outstretched as he tried to alleviate the pain. His face was severely bruised and battered, from blunt beatings just moments earlier by the Loan sharks.
His eyes bore a misty haze, yet he couldn't tell if it was tears or the rain.
Or maybe both.
'If only I were more social.'
'Would I be a loser?'
'If only I weren't born an orphan.'
'Would I be here?'
'If only I were stronger.'
'Would I be dying a dog's death?'
'If only I hadn't clicked that dumb link and tried to cheat my way through life...'
SMACK!
"Hey, hey, wake up! Don't go dying so early on us, you had us worried there."
Maru looked up, eyes still hazy, his head spinning like he had been drinking.
"Wha....What... do you want?"
3 men stood over him, he didn't know their names, and honestly, he didn't care to know. If he was going to die here, what good would that do?
"What do we want? We must've struck you upside the head a bit too hard, baby boy Maru! I want my fucking money! Where is it?!"
SMACK!
He was struck across the face with a wooden stick.
"I...I don't..."
SMACK!
"That word displeases me, Maru."
Maru was then put on his feet, and the main loan shark wrapped his arm over Maru's shoulders.
"Look, I'm a nice guy. If you get to know me, trust me, you'd believe so too. But there's just one thing you should know about me..."
He was interrupted by his lackeys.
"He doesn't play about his money!"
Maru was then shaken violently and punched again, sliding back down the brick wall.
"So where the hell is it?"
A loser.
'My whole life... I've been that. But if I'm dying, then does any of it matter anymore? Fine then, I surrender. I let go. I'm leaving it all behind.'
Maru smirked, blood between his teeth, and he let out a wheezing cough through a laugh.
Ptoo!
Spit landed at the feet of the loan sharks.
"Eat a d*ck," Maru told them with a bloody smile.
Silence filled the alleyway.
The main loan shark sighed and cracked his neck and knuckles.
The two men to his left and right began putting on gloves.
"Then so be it," The Loan shark said.
Maru died that day. Right there in that alley.
Memories flashed through his mind upon lying in his own pool of blood. Most of them weren't good memories, so he just let them all go.
'But not you....'
The memory of the woman he saw as a mother.
'You can stay... with me. Mother.'
Thus, he died there.
In his Spider-Man briefs.