The letter came on a Tuesday. Plain envelope. Thin paper. Crest in the corner. The kind of paper that doesn't even crinkle properly when you open it — it just gives way, like it's apologising.
Martin sat at his desk to read it. He already knew.
“We regret to inform you that your visa renewal has not been approved. You are required to leave the country within fourteen (14) days from receipt of this notice. Please make necessary arrangements for your departure. Non-compliance will result in criminal penalties.”
He stared at the last sentence. Not because it surprised him — it didn’t — but because it finally, at long last, used the exact kind of language he'd feared all along. Clinical. Inevitable. Final.
There was no explanation. Just a removal.
He’d been drinking daily — not as a vice, not even as pleasure. He drank to feel normal. That much was clear now. Not a binge. Not a release. Just a slow, steady erasure.
Each night, he disappeared into a blackout.
Each morning, he woke in a sweat, wondering what he’d done, what he might have said, what he might have seemed like.
And that’s when the ritual began: the visits, the questions, the careful, guiltless confessions. He never caused scenes while drunk. He caused scenes while sober.
He visited the local 7-Eleven seven times — each visit marked by apologies, theories, and requests to view CCTV footage for the hours he couldn’t recall. Three times he presented himself at the police station, asking — with increasing specificity — whether his name had come up in connection to theft, drunkenness, or general civic disturbance. Twice he attended the provincial court, uninvited and without counsel, to inquire whether any civil suits had been filed against him — anonymously or otherwise. These were not acts of defiance, but of devotion. And yet, immigration became aware of the pattern. The reports described his conduct as disruptive, a term vague enough to be fatal.
At the 7-Eleven, they patiently permitted him to sit in the back office and watch himself on screen. And each time, what he saw shook him in a way he couldn’t explain.
There I am, he thought. Just walking. Just choosing beer. Just paying and leaving. No shaking. No fear. No rituals. Just normal.
That was the most remarkable thing. Not that he wasn't stealing — but that he wasn't performing innocence. He was just a man, buying more beer.
And then, the next day, he’d march in and undo it all: apologise, inquire, press staff for clarification, ask for the timestamp, promise to never drink again. He’d push them until they reported him — not out of spite, but exhaustion.
He was never a danger. Just a disruption. A statistical inconvenience.
They didn’t arrest him. They didn’t question him. They just let the letter do the work.
One complaint. Then another. A record. A file. A notation. The visa renewal process, when it came, simply let him fall through a crack he’d dug himself.
He spent the night before departure in a holding cell.
White walls. Clean bed. No bars, just a heavy door. He shared it with an overstayer — younger, louder, too tired to care.
“So what’d you do, mate?” the guy asked, chewing gum, half-grinning like they were killing time at a bus stop.
Martin sat on the edge of the bed. His hands were resting in his lap like folded napkins.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s complicated. There’s a lot in my head. I guess I just made it happen.”
The guy nodded slowly, like that made perfect sense.
Martin added, softly:
“I think I drank to let the real me out in public. That’s the truth of it. When I was drunk, I was fine. I was human. I was quiet, I was kind, I was invisible. It was the next day — the sober part — that made me look insane.”
He thought about that final time, watching the footage. Himself walking down an aisle with a plastic basket. Calm. Focused. Not asking to be seen. Just being.
“I thought I was scared of doing something wrong,” he said. “But I think I was more scared of being seen at all.”
He packed carefully. He’d rehearsed for this. In the safe he left copies of his records — labelled, indexed, signed — in case anyone needed to review them after his departure.
He folded the lawyer’s letter one last time, placed it in his coat pocket, and considered burying the copy in the park. But it felt unnecessary now.
The sword had finally dropped. And it didn’t even make a sound.
At the airport, no one asked him anything.
He waited silently, passport in hand, until his name was called.
He boarded the plane like a man stepping into a photograph. The seatbelt clicked. The cabin hissed. The ground fell away.
And Martin, still holding his documents in his lap, whispered under his breath:
“I wasn’t wrong. I just couldn’t stop proving it.”