Ashen Raizen was twenty four. His apartment looked more like a cage than a home. The walls had cracks running across them, the ceiling leaked when it rained, and the air smelled like damp wood and smoke. His bed was only a thin mattress on the floor, and his table was nothing but two crates with a broken board on top.
He carried scraps through the halls every day wires, bottles, bent sheets of metal, old radios he had dug out of trash bins. And every day, the neighbors looked at him the same way.
"What the hell is he doing again," one man muttered as Ashen passed, holding a bundle of wires.
"What a stupid boy," a woman said, shaking her head.
"Jobless boy always picking up trash," another voice laughed. "He'll never be anything but a trash collector."
Ashen heard them all. But he chose to ignore them. People called him a fool, others said he was chasing nothing by collecting trash. But the word that stung most was when someone whispered, "He's a failure already, and he doesn't even know it."
He never argued back. What was the point? Words wouldn't change their minds. All he could do was climb the cracked staircase to his room and keep working with scraps scattered everywhere.
Because the scraps weren't just trash to him. They were pieces of a dream.
This night was like all the others his small, broken room lit only by a flickering lamp. The table was a mess, scattered pieces of wires twisted together, soda cans cut into unrecognizable shapes, broken circuit boards, and bottles filled with mixtures he had stirred himself. In the middle sat a small glass container.
Inside the glass was a slime like dust. To anyone else, it was a fancy toy but to him it was a treasure. The dust glowed faint blue and moved on its own.
Ashen moved closer while lining forward a little, his dark messy hair stuck to his face, sweat dripping into his eyes. His lips trembled as he whispered, "Come on please don't disappoint me."
The dust inside began to form shapes, tiny patterns dancing in the glow. His breath caught in his throat. His chest tightened.
"I did it," he shouted joyfully, voice breaking. "It's finally working."
For the first time in his life, he finally had the chance to prove himself. The chance to show that all those years of hunger, loneliness, and rejection weren't for nothing.
His finger moved over the last switch. One click, and everything would be complete.
Then
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
The sudden pounding at the door made him jerk back. His finger slipped away from the switch.
"Raizen!" a harsh voice rang out. "Open the door right now!"
Ashen's face went pale. His landlady. Mrs. Cragwell.
"Now is not the time please," he whispered quickly, turning back to the glass. The glow flickered nervously. "Damnit, not now please"
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
"You think you can hide? You're three months behind on rent, boy! Three months!" Pay up
Her words tore through his concentration. His hands shook. The substance inside the container trembled, unstable.
"Stay steady," he begged softly, adjusting the wires.
Her fist hit the door again. "You think you're scientist? Playing with garbage while people are working? You'll never be anything!"
Ashen clenched his teeth. His focus slipped up again. Sparks flew from the wires, burning his skin. The glow in the container shifted from colors.
"No, no, no" he whispered, panic rising in his chest. He twisted knobs, slammed switches, sweat pouring down his forehead.
Outside, her voice only grew sharper. "All this time wasted and what did you get in return? Nothing! Just wasted your youth with all this pile of trash!"
The container cracked. Thin lines spread across the glass. Heat radiated out, giving him minor burn marks on his face.
Ashen's eyes widened in horror. He knew what was coming.
The red glow turned white, almost blinding him. The hum grew deeper and echo resounded.
"Oh no" he whispered. His heart sank.
The container shook violently. Tools clattered to the floor. The substance pulsed like a furious heartbeat.
BOOM it exploded.
Light swallowed the room. The table shattered. The walls cracked. Fire tore through the air.
Ashen's body was lifted in the blast, weightless, spinning. His skin burned, his ears filled with thunder, his eyes turned white.
And in that moment he saw his life.
He saw himself as a boy, barefoot, standing outside a village shack. His stomach empty, his hands holding a broken toy car he had taken apart just to see how it worked. The other children had laughed at him. "Bastard," they called him. "Always spoiling things he touches."
He saw himself at fifteen, sitting alone in a school library. Books stacked around him while classmates whispered and pointed. "Hopeless fool," they said. "He'll never belong here."
He saw himself at twenty, walking the city streets with a backpack full of wires. Shop owners turned him away. Employers shook their heads. "You are just eating your time. "It's worthless."
He saw the nights he went hungry, chewing on stale bread, drinking water to fill his hunger. He saw his hands cut and scarred from scraps of metal. He saw his sleepless eyes staring at broken wires, whispering, "please work."
Every insult, every laugh, every door slammed shut he remembered them all.
And yet, he trived from all the insults which drove him to compete with himself . The stubbornness is also there and then the, foolish fire that refused to die.
Ashen smiled faintly, even as the flames consumed him.
"At least I tried, I really did my best," he whispered.
Then the explosion engulfed him whole.
Silence.
The city outside went on, uncaring. Cars honked, neon lights flickered, people walked home.
In the hallway, Mrs. Cragwell stumbled back, her fist frozen in midair. Smoke seeped from the destroyed door.
Inside, there was nothing left but pile of rubble, ashes, and silence.
Ashen Raizen the young man mocked as trash, the fool who dreamed too big was gone.
He had died at the very moment of his greatest breakthrough.
No one knew. No one cared. To the world, he had been nothing more than a speck of dust a poor boy who died foolishly.