Reincarnated To Divorce My Wife Before The Apocalypse

Chapter 6: The Ruin

"Mr. Woods," he said, genuinely puzzled, "why is my clothing on the street? I only stepped out for a work. Don't tell me you're still angry at me for forgetting my palm on your cheek?"

Harrison Woods snorted, lifting his chin. "Don't play dumb with me, boy, you can't rage bait me. My daughter Silvia called and ordered every single one of your things thrown out, and I did it. You must have done something to displease her, and whatever it is, you'd better fix it."

He jabbed a finger toward the street. "Now get moving. Go and apologize to your wife, beg her forgiveness properly, and maybe, maybe, I'll let you sleep in this house tonight."

Felix looked at him, the way one looks at a strange animal at the zoo.

Harrison's face reddened. "Why are you looking at me like that?! You think I'm old?! You think I'm senile?! You think I have dementia, you ungrateful mutt?! I built this house with my own two hands while you were still..."

"Dad? What's all this shouting about?"

The front door opened wider, and a young woman stepped out. About twenty-one, with the same silver hair as Silvia, the same fair skin, the same sharp chin. Just younger, and carrying the same permanent frown the whole family seemed to be born with. Sandra Woods, Silvia's little sister.

"This trash was cursing at me!" Harrison jabbed his finger at Felix. "Calling me names! Me, his father-in-law!"

Sandra's eyes swept over Felix, and over the heap of clothes, and settled back on his face with the cold disgust of someone speaking to a trash.

"You heard my father," she said flatly. "Being hotheaded isn't good for someone as old as you, apologise and behave maturely."

She didn't even ask questions on what happened. In her world, her father had spoken, therefore the verdict was in.

Felix blinked at her, and then his face lit up with the warm, earnest expression of a man about to say something truly kind.

"Miss Woods, I really mean this. You have an incredible gift." His voice was soft, encouraging, almost proud.

"Most people spend their whole lives trying to become reasonable human beings, and you... you've skipped all of that. You judge a case without hearing a single word, you pick a side before the crime even exists, and you do it all with such confidence. That is a special talent. Please, never change. The world needs people like you, so the rest of us know what to avoid becoming, also I'm just 25 years old."

Sandra's mouth opened, then closed as she slowly understood Felix hidden insults.

"You... you piece of trash!" Her face went scarlet. "How dare you mock me?! My sister should never have married a worthless nobody like you! A man like you should have been left on the street where you belong!"

Felix smiled, a slow, genuinely happy smile, as if she had just announced wonderful news.

"Funny you should say that," he said pleasantly. "That exact wish was granted today. Your sister and I are officially divorced. Signed, stamped, finalized at the courthouse this afternoon. So congratulations, Miss Woods. Your family got rid of me on a platter of gold. Do enjoy it."

"...what?" Harrison and Sandra both exclaimed in shock.

Felix turned away from their frozen faces, crouched by the heap, and started rummaging.

Shirts. Shoes. Books he would never miss. He dug through it all. Then his fingers closed around a flat wooden frame, and another. His parents' photographs.

His mother's smile in the first one, his father's squint in the second, both of them standing in front of the old house in better years.

He brushed the dust off the glass with his sleeve.

Then something else caught his eye, buried under a pile of his own shirts. An old coat, heavy, thick, its fabric faded to a dull olive. His father's coat, the one he used to wear when he worked as a scientist in Antarctica. Felix remembered being small and wrapping himself in it, swimming in it, while his father laughed.

He shrugged and took it too and without looking back, walked away.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?!" Harrison's voice cracked across the street. "I'm talking to you, trash!"

"He's throwing another tantrum, Dad," Sandra called out, loud enough for every window to hear. "Ignore him. He'll be back before midnight, begging at the door like he always does. Where else could a useless man like him possibly go?"

The neighbors muttered among themselves behind their gates, some laughing, some shaking their heads, all of them watching the free show.

Felix did not bother turning around.

Instead, he crossed the street, and there, directly opposite the polished, sneering house of the Harrisons, stood his own inheritance.

The villa walls were cracked from top to bottom. The zinc roofing was half torn away, the broken sheets hanging like ripped skin. The yard was a jungle of weeds, and the gate hung off one hinge, creaking softly in the evening wind. The neighbors called it the ruin of Victorious Street.

Felix stood in front of it and smiled.

Because the walls could be rebuilt, the roof could be replaced, the weeds could be burned away.

And the land. The land was enormous, stretching wide on both sides, bigger than any yard on this street. While the Harrisons had spent years polishing their little box of a house, his parents' ruin sat on ground worth ten of theirs.

"Dad. Mom." He touched the photograph in his hand, his voice low. "I abandoned this house once, and I spent that life regretting it. Not this time. This time it becomes my fortress. And from right there," he glanced back at the Woods house, cold and bright with lights, "I will watch everything this family built turn to ice."

He pulled out his phone and called a taxi.

Half an hour later, he was checked into a hotel room on the ninth floor. He ordered dinner from room service, and then, almost as an afterthought, added one more request.

"Also, could you bring me a pen and some paper? As many sheets as you can spare."

The food arrived twenty minutes later, together with a small stack of hotel stationery. Felix tipped the waitress, closed the door, and turned the lock.

Then he sat down at the desk, pulled the pen from its little paper sleeve, and placed it above the first blank page.

Six months.