Tym

Tym held his glass with one hand and the door with the other, guiding the three fresh employees through the restaurant toward the company table. The place buzzed with the usual end-of-the-week liveliness. Clinking glasses, the murmur of conversation, and bursts of laughter from larger groups resonated. He nodded toward a waitron, acknowledging the reserved section in the back.

“This is what we do when someone leaves,” he said over his shoulder. “Dinner, speeches, a few drinks. Then back to work tomorrow.”

The new hires trailed behind him, exchanging glances that suggested they weren’t sure whether to be excited or concerned. Tym had been here for years, long enough to see people come and go. Facility Manager, among other responsibilities, nothing flashy, but reliable work. It kept the lights on, kept things running. That was his job: keeping things running.

At the long table, Marc was already in full storytelling mode, as a good guest of honour. His eyes gleamed as he recounted how a chance trip to Peru had changed his life.

“Llamas,” Marc said, stretching out the word like it contained some deep wisdom. “I never thought I’d care about them, but the second I saw them on the hills, I just… knew.”

Tym took his seat, barely reacting.

Marc had been one of the best managers in the company. Sharp, dependable, methodical. And now he was leaving to raise llamas and sell their wool.

Tym took a sip of his drink.

It was always something dramatic, wasn’t it? People discovering passions that turned into life-altering revelations. Like his old colleague who quit finance to open a surf school. Or his cousin who left tech to become a blacksmith.

Tym had never stumbled across one of those. Sure, he had interests. He enjoyed painting figurines, intricate little knights, bots, and monsters. It was relaxing. And he knew a surprising amount about the history of alcohol, from medieval brewing techniques to Prohibition-era smuggling. Sometimes he imagined himself as a sommelier or a niche historian, but it never went beyond idle curiosity.

The truth was, Tym was just… Tym. Average in most ways. Even his name wasn’t special. It wasn’t short for anything, didn’t have some cool origin. The mysterious ‘y’ was just a clerical mistake his father made at birth registration, and by the time anyone noticed, it was too late to change.

He raised his glass when Marc’s speech reached its inevitable toast.

“To new beginnings,” Marc declared.

Everyone cheered. Tym drank.

At that moment, the waitron arrived with a tray of unexpected fortune cookies and dropped it on the main table.

“This isn’t even a Chinese restaurant,” one of the new hires murmured.

“It was Chinese news year last week,” Marc informed the assembly.

Tym grabbed the bowl of cookies, split it in sub groups and got one person per table to come and distribute it.

“Free treat! I won’t complain.” Kassidy jolted.

Everyone cracked theirs open, reading their fortunes aloud between laughs.

Tym looked at his with hesitation. He wasn’t superstitious but things were always more real when revealed. This thin band of paper and its mysterious black letters were like horoscopes, Tym didn’t believe in it but….  he still read it. His thumbs brushed the irregular granular edges of the biscuit. Light caught all small asperities. He pushed both sides apart and a crack formed. Slowly the cookie opened from top to bottom. The prediction unrolled on its left part and was kept prisoner of the right one. Tym pulled it out in a virtuous extraction. He breathed.

“You will find what you’re chasing at the end of a great journey.”

Tym smiled then he rolled his eyes, crumpled the paper, and tossed it onto his plate.

The wording was dramatic enough to be memorable, but that was only paper.

Marc poured both of their glasses and they argued about previous CEOs.

Tym had work tomorrow, but after such a night it will probably be a slow day.

Tym had fully intended to forget the fortune cookie. It was nothing, at least it should be. He should have remembered Marc and the fun night more than this biscuit. Yet, as he sat at his desk the next morning, staring at emails and maintenance reports, the words wouldn’t leave him alone.

“You will find what you’re chasing at the end of a great journey.”

What was he chasing?

If he was chasing anything he would be knowing it. He wasn’t one of those people searching for a grant meaning, a big career or infinite money. He liked structure. Predictability. His work was great and necessary. He was keeping the building running like a well-oiled machine. And that was the greatness of his life, it was uneventful.

And yet…

At lunch, he caught himself googling “great journeys” without even thinking. The search results were full of epic road trips, spiritual retreats, and gap-year backpacking adventures. Ridiculous. He closed the tab immediately.

He even stayed late that night, adjusting the company’s emergency evacuation plans, something no one had asked him to do.

Then came the ambush.

“Sit down, Tym,” said Miss Malindi from HR, closing the door behind him.

Tym blinked. A meeting with HR was rarely a good sign. He usually was here for advice and reference not as the main subject.

“We need to talk about your vacation days.”

Tym relaxed. This was just the usual check-in. He had plenty of unused time off. He always had.

“Right,” he said, reaching for his phone. “I can probably take a long weekend next month.”

“No, Tym. You need to take at least a month off.”

He froze. “What?”

“You have so much leave saved up that Finance flagged it,” Malindi said. “Company policy, if you don’t use it, we have to force it. Starting tomorrow!”

“But I like working,” he protested. “We have a lot to do with Marc’s departure. I…”

Malindi held up a hand. “Tym. This isn’t a negotiation.”

A full month. Doing nothing.

Tym was losing his mind. He had exhausted all possible activities. He had tried everything. He tossed and turned on the couch. It had been… two days.

Really, he had tried relaxing at home, but his apartment felt oddly empty without work emails and safety reports. He liked being by himself sometimes, but after so long without anyone around, he was starting to feel lonely and unmotivated.

He reorganized his bookshelves, cleaned the entire house from attic to basement, re-alphabetised his kitchen spices, painted all the miniature figurines in his backlog and even repainted some of the others.

Then, he turned to learning new things. He started researching the history of whiskey distillation. By day three, he had learned enough to estimate the age of a whiskey just by the way the sunlight reflected through it.

Tym was spiralling.

He needed to do something.

Which is how he found himself standing in front of a self-improvement seminar titled: “Unlocking Your True Potential.”

After the fifth slide of pure bullshit and late-night pub-level philosophy, he left the seminar.

Tym spent the next two weeks sampling every kind of introspective nonsense he could find.

A meditation retreat. A life coach who charged an absurd amount just to tell him to ‘visualize success.’ A chakra balancing session that mostly involved breathing heavily while a woman waved crystals over his chest.

He turned to religion; after all, it had helped many people, maybe it could help him too. He ordered a Bible, a Quran, a Torah, and a handful of other booklets, all in English. Then he looked up summaries and translations, as reading everything felt too much like a lecture, even with all the time he had. Finally, he decided it would be faster to meet with priests, rabbis, imams, pastors, and some others he could find.

He even attended religious services for faiths whose names he couldn’t remember, just to see if anything resonated.

It didn’t.

But what did intrigue him were the people he met along the way.

The retired lawyer who now ran a bee sanctuary, speaking about his bees with a calm reverence. The woman who left her corporate job to become a professional storyteller, her voice always carrying a dramatic flair. The IT guy who sold all his belongings to live in a van, sunburnt and grinning, telling stories of life on the road.

They all had some big moment, a realization, a calling, a passion that pushed them forward.

Tym had none of that.

At the end of it all, he returned home exhausted, having discovered nothing and lost a great chunk of savings.

Worst of all?

He still wanted to work.

Tym needed to think about something else. So, he turned to fiction, or at least the kind that assumed its own nature. He binge-watched adventure movies instead.

First, Into the Wild. Then, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. By the time he reached The Darjeeling Limited… something clicked.

Maybe he just needed a journey to shake things up. Maybe he would find whatever he was missing if he left home for a while. Worst case? He’d get some rest somewhere new. It could even be a somewhere with a little sun.

He didn’t need to go full llama-farm like Marc. He didn’t need to find enlightenment in a cave.

Just… a change of scenery. A small adventure.

So, he made a decision. He grabbed his backpack and packed the bare essentials, spare clothes, toiletries, and a charger. He was doing it. He was going backpacking.

But first?

A proper sendoff. Drinks with friends, colleagues.

One last night out before the journey began.

Bells were ringing. The pavement was rough and cold. Tym woke up feeling like his brain had been replaced with cotton and regret.

His mouth was dry. His head throbbed.

And he was not in his apartment.

He blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling of a bus stop.

He sat up, and realized… this wasn’t some faraway city. This was literally just the neighbouring city.

Somehow, his “great journey” had started with a 30-minute drunken train ride he didn’t remember.

Tym changed his smelly shirt and trousers for darker, more comfortable sportswear. Hungover and confused, Tym wandered the unfamiliar streets, trying to get some coffee in place of breakfast.

Along the way, he stumbled across people gathering for something and calling for participants. They were forming a big group near the dawn of the forest. It was chaotic and unclear at first. But he overheard two people discussing a missing person. If he was going on a journey, he could use part of it to help communities along the way.

Immediately Tym tried to get a better picture of the problem. Apparently, some confused guy lost himself in the woods.

Tym stepped forward, taking in the scattered fragments of information. A man was missing. White guy. Average build. Plain shirt. Someone mentioned the name John.

“John?” Tym repeated. “Are you sure?”

A woman hesitated. “Well, I heard it from someone who heard it from someone else. Hold on, I’ll check.”

She hurried off to confirm, leaving Tym surrounded by anxious volunteers. He scanned the group. There was an older man in a reflective vest, clearly taking this way too seriously, barking orders with the confidence of someone who had watched too many survival documentaries. A teenager holding his phone awkwardly, livestreaming the whole event like a reality show. A couple, dressed in full hiking gear, nodding gravely at every piece of information like they had been waiting for this moment their whole lives.

Tym rubbed his temples. This was getting messy fast.

“Okay, listen up,” he said, slipping into a role that felt oddly familiar. “If he’s lost, he’s probably either following the main path, and he will probably come across the cabin or construction. We should send a team there. The second possibility, he was panicking and going the exact opposite way. Someone should check downhill, people tend to walk down if they’re disoriented. Also, anywhere with water sources or eye-catching formations. And keep an eye out for places where he could trip, roots, loose rocks, that kind of thing. No one goes alone.”

A few people nodded, muttering agreement. The guy in the vest gave him an approving look.

The woman returned, slightly out of breath. “Okay, so… turns out it’s not John. Someone misheard. It was Tom.”

Tym frowned. “Tom?”

“Yeah. No. Wait.” She squinted at her phone. “Oh, wow. No. It’s… Tym?”

Silence.

Tym blinked. “Wait. What?”

His heart skipped a beat as it all snapped into place.

The confusion. The vague description. The reason nothing quite added up.

They were looking for him.

He was the missing person.

Tym let out a short, stunned laugh. “Oh. Shit. It’s me!”

“What are you saying, son?” the older man in a reflective vest asked.

“You are looking for me!”

People stopped. The rumour spread quickly through the forest. The search party gathered once more but now around Tym. They showed signs of curiosity and a hint of anger. And a confused crowd could quickly turn into something hazardous.

Tym climbed onto a nearby rock to overlook the assembled crowd. He took a deep breath.

“We found him! You found him… You found me!” he started with his throat dry but his mind surprisingly clear. They were waiting for more.

“We all think life-changing moments come with some grand sign, some bolt of lightning telling us who we are and what we’re meant to do. But it’s not like that. Change isn’t one big moment. It’s thousands of tiny ones. A decision to step out of your routine. A choice to say yes when you’d normally say no. A single step that turns into a journey.”

He glanced around, eyes landing on the group that had searched for him. “I thought adventure meant going somewhere far, doing something bold. But it’s not just about where you go. It’s about what you learn along the way. It’s about the people. About yourself. About what you actually want.”

He let the words settle. “And yeah, sometimes you end up right back where you started. But you’re not the same person who left.”

He built it up as if leading to some life-altering revelation.

And then, with dramatic flair, he concluded:

“You can also find yourself at home, doing what you love, even if it’s not spectacular or ultra-ambitious.”

Silence.

Then, someone clapped.

Then another.

And before long, the whole room was cheering, because whether or not they understood, it sounded profound as hell.

And for the first time, he was perfectly fine with that.

The reliable guy. The problem solver. The office worker who made sure things ran smoothly.

He didn’t need a great journey to find himself.

He realised he had never been lost.

Someone asked, “And you? What are you in the end?”

Tym smiled.

“I’m Tym, the office worker.”