Monarch of Time

The sun slowly rose in the Guangdong province of China.

In a complex of abandoned apartments scheduled for demolition an alarm was ringing at 6:00 am in the morning.

The sound was coming from an almost broken down apartment, a door you couldn ’t close properly no matter how hard you pushed, with a chair behind it in a 45 degree angle acting as a lock for the door.

The apartment was medium sized, around 80 s.m.
yet it was almost empty inside.
A bed mattress was in the middle of the living room along with a small sized table with an alarm clock on it.
On the side of the room were 10 big water bottles along with some packs of instant noodles.

A body could be seen moving under the blanket that was covering the mattress, reaching for the alarm clock on the table.

’ ’Ugh ’ ’ that person groaned after he tapped the alarm clock once.

A malnourished body revealed itself from underneath the blanket as it slowly rose from the bed.

A young man seemingly around 16-17 years old rose from the mattress as he walked towards the bathroom.
The water was cut off since the apartment was abandoned so the young man couldn ’t even take a shower in the morning.
He grabbed a half empty bottle of water from the table with the alarm clock on it, and used it along with his toothbrush to wash his teeth and when he finished, he then gulped down the rest of the water from the bottle.
Then he grabbed his work clothes from the table and put them on as he left the apartment.

It was around a 20 minute walk from the apartment complex until he reached a huge construction site with a lot of warning signs of: ’ ’Danger ’ ’ and ’ ’Work in progress ’ ’.

As soon as he walked towards an 8 story half-finished building, the young man heard a voice from behind him shouting ’ ’ay Rock ’ ’.
The voice belonged to a 45 year old man.

’ ’Good morning uncle ’ ’ said Rock.

Of course Rock wasn ’t his real name, but a nickname given to him by the people working in the construction site with him as he didn ’t like to talk that much.
Rock didn ’t have a real name from his parents, he was an orphan, and he grew up in a house complex owned by the government for orphaned children.
The government send food to those houses once a week but it wasn ’t enough for the kids there to feed themselves.
The orphanages were all full and that ’s why the government created these houses and sent food to the children but a lot of them still died due to hunger or illnesses as there was no one to take care of them even when the