'The ones who truly build the world are rarely the ones who seek to lead it.'
The kettle whistled.
Ren turned off the flame with a soft click and poured hot water into a chipped ceramic cup—one of the mismatched ones he'd picked up at a Sunday flea market. A teabag floated and sank in silence. No fancy coffee. No electric kettle. Just the soft, earthy scent of morning.
Outside, the rooftop garden swayed gently in the breeze. Tomatoes clung to the vines. Basil spread wildly in the corners. The sun hadn't yet climbed, but the sky was already shifting from indigo to grey.
Another slow day. Like he was a man who loved peace.
Ren lived alone. Not the kind of loneliness that gnawed at you—but the kind that felt like a retreat. The world outside moved too fast. Too loud. He had done his time in chaos. Now, he watched life from the edge, careful not to fall in.
Once, he coordinated disaster relief in South Asia. He'd stood waist-deep in floodwater helping rebuild homes. Drawn blueprints on cardboard. Argued with corrupt officials about food distribution.
That was before.
Before politics poisoned purpose.
Before the numbers started to matter more than the people.
Just… before.
He sipped his tea.
A quiet "ahh" slipped out, unbidden. His face was washed, but the toothbrush still sat in the cup by the sink.
No hurry.
Later that morning, Ren made his usual trip to the market. He didn't need much—just rice, tofu, eggs, and something green.
The old woman at the vegetable stall waved him over.
"You always buy just enough," she chuckled. "Never more."
"If I buy too much, I'll end up feeding every store owner here," he joked.
"You should marry. Someone needs to feed you properly," she said, rearranging her goods.
Ren gave his usual reply. "Too much work. I already have peace and silence—why ruin that by adding someone else's chaos? Maybe one day. But not now."
Ren slowly stepped away and left the place.
She didn't press. The quiet ones never needed to explain.
***
That afternoon, not long after he finished sorting his groceries, one of Ren's neighbors called out from across the alley.
"Ren, can you lend me a hand?"
He sighed lightly. "What now?"
"My solar frame. Bent itself to hell last night."
Ren came over without complaint. Together, they cleared the toolshed and propped the panel against the wall. He dismantled the frame, cut new supports, taped the cracked joints.
While aligning the last segment, Ren paused to rest his knees. The winter sun was weaker now, but it still caught on the rusted bolts—gleaming like tiny mirrors.
He remembered a village tucked into the lowlands of Central Java—narrow dirt paths, patchy tin roofs, and an irrigation line held together with bamboo, twine, and too much hope. The rains came early that year. They'd worked through days of flooding, ankle-deep in water, trying to keep the rice paddies from drowning.
The old man who led them had already lost half his harvest. Yet when the final water gate held—just barely—he smiled like it was enough. That night, he tore a boiled cassava in two and gave Ren the bigger half.
"cah bagus," he said. A good—smart boy.
Ren had never forgotten the way he said it—not proud, not impressed. Just deeply, quietly grateful.
That stuck with him more than any certificate ever did.
It wasn't the number that mattered. It was the way people looked at you when they realized they wouldn't be forgotten.
He exhaled slowly and tightened the final bolt.
"I swear, you're the kind of guy who knows everything," the neighbor said.
"I live alone," Ren replied, brushing off his hands. "It was either learn or spend money I didn't have—for replacement… and labor."
"Here, take this," the neighbor offered, holding out a soft drink. "Least I can do."
As sunset bloomed in flames of orange and magenta, Ren climbed to the rooftop.
He sat on the grey couch with tea by his side, notebook in hand. Sketching a layout for a gravity-fed irrigation system—not for a project. Just because he liked it.
A breeze stirred. The reward, perhaps, for a simple, quiet day.
Today felt better than usual. That rare kind of peace you don't want to disturb. Everything still. Everything right. He closed his eyes.
The light changed.
Not sunset gold. Not city glow.
Something else.
A spiral of color—like every hue in the spectrum colliding in slow, graceful motion. Rainbow light wrapped the rooftop in silence.
This feels weird Ren thought. The words barely formed.
And then—time stopped.
Not metaphorically.
Like… Literally.
No air. No movement. No heartbeat.
Ren stood alone, frozen in the moment. The only moving piece in a paused world.
Then it hit him.
An impossible pull. Like being yanked through the folds of existence. Like drowning in sky. His being—his identity—peeled, rewritten, stretched thin across stars he couldn't name.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the air.
Clean. Too clean. Like breathing for the first time.
Then the moonlight—casting not one shadow, but two.
[BLINK]
He was falling, so fast he barely noticed when he hit the ground.
The swirling colors faded, swallowed by the circle beneath him—etched symbols in the dirt glowing faintly before fading.
He stood, disoriented, surrounded by strange geometry, moonlight, and silence.
None of it belonged to the modern world.
"This has to be a dream," he muttered.
But the cold breeze, the silence, the dust on his clothes… it was all too real.
And Ren—former rural development planner, part-time rooftop gardener—was now standing in the middle of a magic circle, alone in a place he did not recognize.
Unknown.