Rey sat in the farthest seat of the lecture hall—back row, right corner, just where the old lights flickered and the cracks in the ceiling spidered above. The place smelled of rust and damp concrete. It suited him.
His desk bore the carved initials and fading ink of those who once dreamed of changing the world. Rey didn't add his name. He doubted the world would remember it.
The classroom filled slowly, laughter echoing from students who had lives beyond just surviving. Rey kept his hood up, arms crossed, sleeves covering yesterday's bruises.
"Yo, dead-eye's still breathing?"
A voice like nails scraping iron. Rey knew it too well—Jai, the loudest of a pack of jackals who thought cruelty made them strong.
"Your mom still scrubbing floors? Bet she wishes she had a smarter son."
Mocking laughter followed. No one stopped them. No one ever did.
Rey didn't look at them. He'd learned the rule: stay quiet, stay unseen, stay alive.
The professor shuffled in minutes later, his voice dull and forgettable. The lesson was about state systems and economic models, but to Rey it was a blur. Numbers, names, timelines—none of it mattered. Not when your ribs ached with every breath.
---
After class, Rey drifted through the crumbling corridors like a ghost no one wanted to see. His stomach growled, but he walked past the canteen. Too crowded. Too loud. Too expensive.
Outside, the skies hung low and grey, like a lid sealing a boiling pot. Rey found his usual spot under a rusted metal shed near the sports field. The grass was dry, the benches warped.
He opened his worn notebook. Not to study. Just to draw. He sketched towers rising above clouds, cities floating in silence, monsters bound in chains beneath glass mountains. A world where pain didn't reach him. A world where he could finally breathe.
---
But reality didn't stay away for long.
As the sun dipped and the field emptied, Jai found him again. Not alone. Two others with him. Always smiling when they hurt people. Always laughing.
"What's with the creepy drawings again?" Jai snatched the notebook. "Trying to escape? Sorry, bud. You're stuck here like the rest of us… only lamer."
Rey reached for the book, but Jai shoved him back. The blow wasn't hard, but Rey stumbled anyway. His body remembered yesterday's bruises too well.
The kicks came next. Quick. Brutal. Not enough to break bones, but enough to remind Rey what he was: prey.
By the time they left, Rey lay on the cold ground, blood on his lip, one page of his notebook torn and fluttering in the wind.
He got up slowly. No one offered help. No one looked twice.
He walked home.
---
The apartment was still. The air stale. The lights hadn't worked in days, and the candles had long burned down to waxy stubs.
His mother was sitting on the floor, coughing into her sleeve. His younger sister, Mira, leaned against the wall, reading by the window's dying light.
"You're late," his mother rasped without looking up.
Rey didn't answer. He washed the blood from his face and collapsed onto the mat beside Mira.
There was no dinner.
There hadn't been for days.
---
Night came like a second skin—hot, suffocating, and endless.
Mira fell asleep quickly. Rey lay awake beside her, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan that barely moved. Every breath hurt. Every second stretched longer than the last.
He hated this life.
Not just the beatings. Not just the hunger.
The emptiness.
The silence after everyone stopped pretending he mattered.
And beneath all of it… a quiet scream. Something deeper than anger. A voice whispering that this world had made a mistake.
That this couldn't be all there was.
That somewhere out there, something else was waiting.
His eyes drifted shut.
And in the distance, something pulsed. A low, rhythmic thrum. Like a heart. Like footsteps echoing from behind a door that should never open.
---