benji xiao || district three || cbd1 || fin

The most common thing you hear whenever you talk about struggle is disbelief at best and outright scorn at worst. Without fail, no matter the subject, they always take one look at your wealth, your mind, your achievements and successes, and say "Yeah, right," to your face as if that's supposed to magically solve all your problems.

And okay, sure. You're not blind nor overly self-centered, usually. To be born into money in Three almost certainly means that one ancestor of yours or another sucked up to the right Capitolite before things all went to shit a century ago and is the reason behind some obscure invention or another, and like many a hereditary succession comes many assumptions, many expectations. To the outside world, you're a target of envy, and justifiably so, yet immune to any sort of hardship as if every problem in the world could be drowned in money. And to your family, there's a standard to live up to so strict it may as well be choking you.

But expectations are obsolete. You're seventeen, not thirty seven, still a kid, still reaping age for fuck's sake. This is the only chance you're ever gonna get to enjoy your youth, free of responsibility, until you're old and withered. Just cause you're the only child doesn't mean you should bend to your parents' every whim and wish.

You have the rest of your life to lose your individuality and become another piece in the cog of Three's stagnating brain machine. But you only ever have one youth.

And screw what anyone else thinks, cause fuck if you aren't gonna make the most of it.