Life 404: Success Not Found

Chapter 10: The Correct Breathing Tutorial

Freza’s phone screen displayed a white circle spinning endlessly against a black background. That buffering symbol, to Freza, was the equivalent of a meditative mandala or a religious symbol demanding absolute devotion. He sat frozen on the edge of the bed, hands clutching his pants pockets, eyes unblinking.

He was waiting for a video titled “How to Get Out of Bed Without Losing Positive Energy (Millennial Burnout Edition)” to finish loading.

“Come on, Indihome... not now,” Freza whispered hoarsely. His throat was dry, but he didn’t dare take a drink yet because he hadn't watched the video “Tutorial: How to Drink Mineral Water So the Minerals Are 100% Absorbed into Your Brain Cells” that he’d saved in his Watch Later list.

Freza had reached a stage where he no longer trusted his biological instincts. To him, instinct was something primitive and inefficient. Why rely on instincts already broken by stress and instant noodles when there were millions of “experts” on YouTube and TikTok ready to dictate his every move against a backdrop of soothing lo-fi music?

For the past month, Freza had substituted his brain with a search bar. He watched tutorials on how to tie shoelaces to look “visionary,” tutorials on how to open a door without looking like someone who was late on rent, and even tutorials on how to blink so his eyes wouldn't look like those of a depressed goldfish.

Suddenly, the white circle stopped spinning. His phone screen turned plain white with text more terrifying than a police summons: “No Internet Connection.”

Freza’s world collapsed.

He shook his phone. He held it high toward the ceiling, hoping some remnants of a signal were snagged in the cobwebs. Nothing. He tried turning on cellular data, but the signal in his room had long been declared a dead zone by every operator in Indonesia.

“Okay, Fre. Calm down. You can do this. You just need to... stand up,” he muttered to himself.

He tried to move his legs. But suddenly, a philosophical question hit him: Which foot should touch the ground first? Right or left?

In a video he’d watched last week, a life coach from Estonia said stepping down with the left foot would activate the creative right brain, but a Feng Shui expert from TikTok warned that stepping down with the left foot would invite bad luck all day long. Freza froze. He couldn't decide. Without a comparison video or a comment section to see the majority opinion, his legs felt as heavy as concrete.

He was trapped in analysis paralysis. He felt like a robot that had lost its firmware.

“Sat! Satya!” Freza screamed.

Satya walked casually into Freza’s room, chewing on a fried snack whose oily aroma filled the room. “What is it, Fre? Screaming like you found a flying cockroach.”

“The internet is dead, Sat! I can’t move!”

Satya looked Freza up and down. “You’re not paralyzed, Fre. You still have two legs. Just step on the floor and walk. It's not that complicated.”

“I can’t! I forgot the procedure! I need the tutorial!”

Satya sighed, swallowing the rest of the fritter in his mouth. “You really have lost your mind. Here, let me help.” Satya pulled Freza’s hand roughly until Freza was standing upright on the floor.

“Ow, Sat! Slow down! I haven't received instructions on how to balance gravity without visual aid!” Freza staggered. He felt like a newborn baby giraffe.

“Now walk to the bathroom and wash your face so your brain isn't just full of algorithms,” Satya commanded.

Freza stepped stiffly. Right, left, right, left. He had to recite the order in his head so he wouldn’t miss a step. Once he reached the sink, a new problem arose. He stared at the water faucet.

“Sat... which way do I turn this faucet? Clockwise or counter-clockwise?”

“Whichever you want, Fre! Just as long as the water comes out!” Satya shouted from the living room.

“But there was a tutorial that said turning the faucet too hard could ruin the water’s vibe!”

Freza finally managed to wash his face after debating with himself for five minutes. However, as he dried his face with a towel, he felt something strange. His chest felt tight. His heart was racing. He began to feel like the oxygen around him was thinning.

“Sat... I... I can’t breathe,” Freza moaned, clutching his chest.

Satya appeared at the bathroom door. “Then just breathe, Fre. Inhale, exhale. You’ve been able to do that since you were a baby.”

“No... you don’t understand,” Freza wheezed. “I remember... I saw a video title in my feed this morning... the title was: ’99% of People Breathe Wrong: The Correct Way to Breathe for Longevity and Success.’ I didn't get a chance to click on it, Sat! I realize now that for the last twenty-five years, I might have been breathing wrong!”

“Good grief, Fre...”

“What if my breathing hasn’t been optimal all this time? What if my inhales are too short? Or if my diaphragm isn't engaged? I’m afraid if I breathe now, I’ll actually damage my internal organs because my technique is wrong!”

Freza began to hyperventilate. He tried to hold his breath for fear of using the wrong technique, but that only made him panic more. His face started turning blue.

“Sat, find a book! Find a manual! Find anything that says ‘How to Breathe’!”

“There’s no such book, you idiot! Breathing is automatic!” Satya began to panic as he saw Freza starting to stumble.

“Check YouTube on your phone! Hurry!”

“The internet is out for the whole neighborhood, Fre! A garbage truck just hit the cable pole at the end of the alley!”

Freza collapsed onto the bathroom floor. He felt the world spinning. He tried to recall the snippet of the video thumbnail he’d seen earlier. There was a picture of glowing lungs and a large arrow pointing toward the stomach.

“Stomach... I have to breathe with my stomach...” Freza tried to puff out his stomach, but he ended up choking instead. “No... not like that... ugh, I forgot the count! How many seconds do I hold? Four? Seven? Eight?”

He felt like he was drowning on dry land. A supreme irony: a modern human nearly dying because he forgot how to perform the most basic function of a living being, simply because he lost access to digital instructions.

“Fre, listen to me,” Satya knelt in front of Freza, grabbing his shoulders. “Follow me. Take a breath... slowly...”

“No! You’re not an expert! You don’t have a blue checkmark! You don’t have ten million subscribers! Your breathing definitely isn't ISO-standard!” Freza flatly rejected Satya’s help.

“I’m still alive, isn't that proof enough that I’m breathing right, you demon?!” Satya’s temper flared. He yanked Freza’s hair slightly to get his friend to focus. “Breathe now, or I’m calling the landlady so you can breathe while she screams at you about the rent!”

At the mention of the landlady, Freza’s fear reflex overcame his tutorial obsession. He spontaneously took a deep breath. Huuuuuh. Then exhaled. Haaaaah.

He did it again. And again.

After a few moments, the color in Freza’s face returned to normal. His heartbeat slowed. He was still alive.

“Well? Are you dead?” Satya asked curtly.

Freza leaned his head against the cold ceramic wall. “I’m... I’m alive. But I feel like my breathing just now... was so crude. Not aesthetic at all. There was zero mindfulness involved.”

“I don’t care. At least you’re not a corpse in my bathroom.”

Freza fell silent. He stared at his trembling hands. He realized how pathetic his condition had become. He was the product of a generation with access to all the information in the world, yet he had lost the ability to do anything without a guide. He knew how to make a Molotov cocktail from a tutorial (though he’d never made one), he knew how to invest in crypto (though he had no money), but he had almost died because he forgot how to inhale.

“Sat,” Freza called out softly.

“What now?”

“Why did we turn out like this? Why do I feel like without a tutorial, I’m just a hunk of meat that doesn't know its own function?”

Satya sat on the floor beside Freza, leaning his head back too. “Because you’re too afraid of being wrong, Fre. The internet makes you feel like there’s a ‘most correct way’ for everything. But life is just trial and error. If you breathe a bit wrong, so what? You’ll just get the hiccups.”

“But in the video, it said ‘Fatal Error’...”

“Of course! If the title was ‘Breathing Normally Is Also Fine,’ nobody would click on it, dummy! They’re selling fear, and you’re their most loyal customer.”

Silence enveloped them both. Without the sound of notifications or auto-playing videos, the boarding house felt very strange. They could hear kids playing soccer in the alley, the meatball vendor striking his bowl, and the sound of their own breathing.

Suddenly, the phone in Freza’s pocket vibrated.

Ting!

Freza’s eyes immediately lit up. The signal was back. The Wi-Fi was on.

With lightning speed, Freza opened his phone. A YouTube notification appeared: “Video Paused: Continue watching ‘The Correct Breathing Tutorial’?”

Freza’s finger moved toward the ‘Play’ button. He desperately wanted to know the correct second count for holding his breath. He wanted to know if his tongue should be touching the roof of his mouth or not.

However, he saw Satya watching him with a judgmental glare. Freza stopped. He saw his own reflection in the black phone screen—the face of a man who looked utterly dependent on that little box.

With a rare burst of courage, Freza pressed the ‘X’ on the notification. He turned off the screen.

“I don’t need that video,” Freza said, sounding mock-heroic.

“Good,” Satya praised. “Now, since you can breathe and stand up, we should go find some food. I’m hungry.”

“Okay. Let's go.”

They walked out of the room. Freza felt proud of himself. He felt he had won a battle against digital dependency. He walked upright, breathing freely (though deep down he was still a little suspicious of whether his technique was correct).

However, once they reached the kitchen, Freza saw a pile of dirty dishes and a pack of instant noodles.

“Sat, you want some instant noodles?” Freza asked.

“Sure. Cook ‘em up.”

Freza took a pot, filled it with water, and turned on the stove. He took the pack of instant noodles, about to open it. Suddenly, he stopped. He stared at the noodle pack with a furrowed brow.

“What is it now, Fre?” Satya asked from the dining table.

Freza swallowed hard. He reached into his pocket again, pulling out his phone in one swift motion.

“I... I forgot, Sat. How do you crack an egg so the yolk stays in the middle and doesn’t break? I remember there was an ‘Aesthetic Seoul Cafe Egg’ tutorial I saved...”

Satya slapped his own forehead hard. “You just said you didn’t need tutorials!”

“This is different, Sat! This is a matter of food aesthetics! If the yolk breaks, my eating mood is ruined; if the mood is ruined, my cortisol levels go up; if cortisol goes up, my breathing gets erratic—”

“SHUT UP! GIVE ME THE EGG!”

Satya snatched the egg and cracked it into the pot carelessly. The yolk broke, mixing with the water that was starting to boil. Freza watched with an expression of horror, as if he had just witnessed a crime against humanity.

“There, it’s cooked, right? It’s edible, right?” Satya shoved the messy bowl of instant noodles in front of Freza.

Freza stared at the noodles. There was no green onion garnish cut at a 45-degree angle. There were no symmetrical sesame seeds. The egg was in shambles.

He picked up a spoon and tasted the broth.

“Well?” Satya asked.

Freza went silent for a moment. “It... still tastes like three-thousand-rupiah instant noodles.”

“Exactly. Stop being so extra with the tutorials.”

Freza nodded, shoveling the noodles into his mouth. He realized one thing: life really wasn't as beautiful as a ten-minute tutorial video with a warm filter. Life was messy, eggs often broke, and sometimes you just had to breathe without knowing the second count.

However, while he was busy eating, another notification popped up on his phone lying on the table.

“New Recommendation: ‘How to Wash Dishes to Save Water and Leave 99.9% Fewer Bacteria.’”

Freza glanced at the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. He glanced at his phone. Then he glanced at Satya.

“Sat...”

“What?”

“Do you know the correct way to wash dishes?”

Satya stood up, grabbed Freza’s phone, and threw it onto the pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room. “Use soap, use a sponge, scrub, rinse. If it’s still greasy, do it again. You don’t need a video!”

Freza took a long breath. This time, he was sure his breathing was correct, because he felt utterly exhausted by his own self.

The status quo returned: Freza was still poor, still unemployed, still confused, and now he realized that even though he knew how to breathe, he still didn't know how to live life without feeling the need to be “taught” by strangers on the internet.

He went back to eating his instant noodles, while secretly wondering: Is there a tutorial on how to stop watching tutorials?