The colourful light show produced by the sudden skirmish of the Corsair intruders and Zoner defenders startled most patrons in the tavern, eventhough most of the regulars should be used to it right now. Although this sort of display of Zoner might is nothing new to Marco as he worked in unison with Lividia weapons and ship testing all the time, he was still a little impressed by its display in real time.
But all the explosions and weapons fire did nothing more than interesting Marco vaguely, in his current state of mind. He watched the last of the Corsair vessels break down and go up in flames closely, as if a metaphor to his diminishing mental stability.
The tavern slowly regained its original setting and its patrons returned to their previous states. This was when Marco's mind snapped back into gear. He looked back round to see Raluca smiling, waiting for him to describe his mental crisis. He felt a strange sense of security and maybe even a hint of love, something absent in his life for the past few weeks.
Marco sighed heavily and began to tell what he could not in front of his colleagues and friends. He thought about it for some time, then finally decided upon a way both understandable by him and Raluca.
"I've been feeling this sort of... insecurity, inadequacy and I guess what you'd call paranoia for the past few weeks. It all amplified sometime after I lost my position as the administrator of Corinth but it had occurred to me way before that, when I was still young with the AngelWing.
Back then I just curbed this sort of feeling by being occupied, working 24/7 around the ship you know. But now, I mostly supervise and give lectures. So these began to resurface again. I always feel I'm not doing enough, not achieving enough, and what I do go unappreciated by others. It's this sense of underachievement and self-doubt that really drives me mad, sometimes I can write a report 10 times and still be unsatisfied with it. Losing my position was another blow to me, because it made me realise I wasn't good enough to deserve it. I've been a proud man, but sometimes I just look at my weapons locker and think about ending it all."
At this point, the once proud explorer almost broke down. He covered his face with his hands and shook his head,
"I don't expect you to understand and burden yourself with all this Ral, you're still young. It's mid life crisis, I guess. It's just... I couldn't tell this to anyone and you're the only one I've ever told because... I dunno, I just wanted someone to listen. I'm sorry."
He looked up again, even under the dim atmosphere of the tavern, his face all worn and his eyes showed visible redness.
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