Standing in front of the front gate, he felt an abiding echo of that - like a frost of resentment and reluctance sunk directly into his bones, painting every action he took with an air of I don't want to do that, I don't want to do anything. If he were superstitious, he might have called it an omen.
And yet - it was all ridiculous. All of it.
All this standing around, wasting time as if it would change anything. All this doubt and foreboding and gymnastic justification of why he couldn't move forward. If there had been a time for such thoughts - if he wanted to worry and woebegone - it had been when he was staring at the magic circle, deciding what to do with it.
He could've walked away, then - gone back to his hard-earned job selling artifically-flavored tea to artificially-smiling customers, gone back to his everyday ordinary life. Maybe he would've gotten a promotion, one day; maybe he would have finally earned enough money to go back to school and pursue a real vocation. There would be a nice girl from a good family and a wedding at city hall, there would be a cozy little apartment with flowers on the windowsill and two children.
But instead, he'd jumped at - literally jumped in - the chance to go somewhere else, be someone else. And now he wanted to regret it? Now, after all this time?
[The Front Gate - 16]