"You're still young..."

'You still have plenty of times.' He continued the familiar words inwardly while heaving for breath after his performance in the audition.

"You still have plenty of times."

He smiled, wryly, but not for the reason the judges assumed.

'Practice more and try again next time.'

Before any one of the three judges could begin uttering the remark he had predicted inside his mind, he bowed and excused himself. 

Rejection. Countless of them.One after another. Like an army of ants charging towards a cookie crumb that fell onto the floor without anyone to pick it up to save it, and it couldn't even save itself.

His perseverance and acceptance of his fate was like that cookie crumb, and each and every rejections from the auditions - the ants.

He had been hearing 'you're still young for the last five years.' He wondered how many more years would he be privileged to hear that remark. He wondered if one day he'd suddenly be slapped instead with 'you're too old.'

Think about it. It could happen. In fact, it definitely would happen. The only thing he didn't know was, when.

They should've just told him the things he had heard from other trainees once when he was actually accepted into a small agency that turned out to be a scam one who sold dreams and hopes, in exchange for hard earned money from pathetic parents, of pathetic kids, like him.

No, he corrected it.

'Omma and Appa aren't the pathetic ones. That was just me.'

"You're so ugly. How did you get accepted?"

"How much money did your parents paid the company, seriously?"

"Just get lost and go get surgery or something. You're ruining my eyes."

He was the weak one. The words hurt him so much, even when he should've seen the harsh truth long before he even allowed himself to be delusioned, allowed himself to dream, of becoming a performer. A dream he didn't deserve. Because whenever he looked into the mirror, not once he thought of himself as handsome, and it was the requirement that not needed be spoken or written anywhere to be understood. He was the stupid one.

They were right. He was the ugly one. How could he even think of being part of them? Part of this world that required a ticket named perfection, particularly when you look into the mirror?

But dream was a stringless kite, oddly. Wild, and shameless. Or maybe that was him. He learnt that when he let his string of rationality be cut off, and he found himself in plastic surgery clinic, in order to validate his dream, to deserve it. How would he know, things wouldn't be solved that easily? Escaping the adjective 'ugly' is never as easy as getting an expensive procedure with his parents support and money. He learnt it the hard way.

And all the while, never once his parents wavered from completely supporting his dream. His damned dream. Never once they told him it wouldn't work, or that he had tried enough and that it's time to move on. Not even when he himself already discovered it on his own.

By then, it was already too late. Maybe dream was actually a deadly addiction.

He didn't know what exactly it was. But he knew his dream was a doomed one, even with blessings from everyone who should mattered. He knew he should've woken up a long time ago. He knew there was nothing to be embarrassed about to walk away from it and to start anew. And he knew his parents would be supportive no matter what his decision would be, even though they always showed encouragement and passion f