Chapter 1: Time to start again

He was breaving heavily, his chest getting tighter with every breath leaving his lung, wet tears were streaming down his face, as he made his way across the long and silent hallway of the university. In his mind the same thought repeated itself over and over.

"How could this happen. I didn't do it. Why..why does this always happen."

Yet, no matter how often he asked himself, there was no answer. Just cold, painful silence. A kind of silence, that was more painful, than any words could ever be. Still he kept asking himself again and again, until he arrived at the door of his flat on the campus of the university.

Quickly, he opened the door, and walked over to his trusty old wooden chair, the same chair he used to sit in for the most part of the last 2 years, whenever he had to study for an exam, or when he was practicing programming by himself.

The chair itself was very simple, it was made of wood, had a small pillow with a flower pattern on it, and had many small doodles and marks all over it. Although the chair wasn't very comftable, and a little crooked, Connor had never even considered replacing it.

After all this was a gift from his little sister, when he started university. She had saved up her pocket money for multiple months to buy the wood to build this chair by hand, with the help of their father.

At first, he was just sitting there, staring into nothingness, hearing nothing, thinking nothing, but eventually, after a couple of minutes, he snapped back to reality.

"How could they just throw me out, I never cheated once in my life, I worked so hard to get into this university, and now I get thrown out, just like that?

And the only reason is, that Tom and his friends decided to put a fucking note in my testbook as a joke ,just for it then it to fall out when I was taking out my stuff for the exam? Seriously ?"

Thinking this, he could't help but chuckle, whilst rubbing his temple probably too hard for his own good.

"I mean hey, at the very least now me telling my parents that they dont need to send me any money for university, because I have a scholarship is actually not a lie anymore. I mean yeah, the part about the scholarship is still not exactly the truth, but thats okay."

His family have always been wonderful, in his opinion maybe even a little too wonderful for their own good. There were no days, were he or his sister ever felt mistreated or not loved, and their parents never spared any effort to try to enable their children to have the brightest future they could have. But exactly the last part was, what worried Connor.

Although his parents were denying it, and always telling him, that he shouldn't worry about such things like money, he knew better. He knew that they were cutting corners for themselves, working overtime a lot, and spending no money on themselves in order to finance both his and his sisters education.

Knowing this, he made a decision when he got accepted into university. He decided that the only way to not be a burden to his parents, and to enable his sister to have a better future, he had to get his parents to not spend money on him anymore. And so he told them, that he managed to get into a scholarship programm when uni started, and luckily they believed it.

This did mean that he had to work a lot on the side, which caused him to barely have any free time besides working and studying for uni, but to him it was worth it, because a little less free time was nothing compared to the happiness of the ones he loved.

Connor's life had never been an easy one, he got bullied ever since he was little, and he had a hard time finding true friends, being betrayed by the ones he liked more than once.

But nothing had ever broken him, it had only made him stronger. All these things had taught him one thing, to swollow his rage, swollow his sadness, and turn it into determination, into power to keep working hard on his dreams.

And thus, no matter what happend, he never lost hope.

Due to this, the determined look soon returned to his face, and he thought:

"Fuck it, I won't let this stop me. The world has never been kind, but I will get through this. I will make my parents proud. Anyway, I gotta find a new place to stay and a proper job, for now, I have no time to waste. Get your ass moving Connor, you got this!"