Chapter 2 : The Flicker

~ a year and few days later ~

No one asked how a seventeen-year-old ended up in a cell meant for grown men. No one cared. They saw the label, killer, and carved it into his name like a brand. He learned quickly: keep your head down, don't flinch, don't trust.

He had entered as a boy. He was leaving as something else.

Some nights, he remembered the blood. The sound the glass bottle made when it  hit and rolled away on the floor. The stillness afterward. And the fact that she never came. Not once. Not in twelve months.

He had counted the days at first. Then the weeks. Then stopped. Time didn't move in prison, it settled like dust, thick and choking. The walls didn't speak, but they listened. They absorbed every scream, every prayer, every lie. 

The guard didn't look up as he muttered, "You can leave now." Nothing elaborate. Just a guard opening a gate and a dark life left behind. The gate screeched as it opened, as if with a reluctant moan, as if the prison itself couldn't decide whether it wanted to let him go.

The late afternoon sun hit his face like a spotlight, casting long shadows behind him, as he stepped out. His eyes scanned the road, the corners, the faces. 

No one waited for him. No warm hug. No familiar voice. Just a sky scattered with small monsoon clouds and the stale scent of smoke clinging to the wind. He tugged at the collar of the shirt they had given back. It was now too tight across the shoulders, too short at the cuffs. It was the same one he had worn the night everything ended.

DV didn't look back. He never did. Not when he was arrested. Not when the verdict was read. And not now, as freedom wrapped itself around him like a coat that no longer fit.

He thought it would feel like freedom, walking out of the hell hole. It oddly didn't. It felt like stepping into a colder kind of cage.

In prison, he had learned things they didn't teach in school. How cruelty wore uniforms. How kindness, when offered, often came with a price. How silence wasn't always peace. Sometimes, it was punishment.

For over twelve months, he'd lived behind rusted bars, flaking walls, and a schedule that chewed the soul down to gristle. He learned things no seventeen-year-old should. Like how silence is a weapon. How kindness is currency. And how sometimes you have to lose a piece of yourself to keep the rest of you breathing.

He didn't sleep much in there. But he saw everything. Boys who cried into hard pillows until they learned it didn't help. Guards who took pleasure in reminding them what they were— worthless humanity. Eyes that stopped blinking. Hearts that didn't beat. The sound of laughter, when inmates pretended they were still human.

He walked quietly.

Past his old school, its walls now buried beneath layers of peeling election posters, faces he didn't recognize. Past the tea stall uncle, once a fixture of his childhood, who didn't even raise his eyes. Past two boys dragging a dog by its tail into an alley, giggling like cruelty was a game. He didn't stop them.

He didn't stop for anything.

Not even for the woman screaming down the road as a man broke the bangles on her wrist, dragging her. Her cries fizzled beneath the blare of horns and the indifference of the city. 

DV didn't step in. He just walked faster, past it.

He found a half-smoked cigarette on the pavement and a match tossed alongside. He lit it, even though he'd never smoked. The burn clawed at his throat, sharp and bitter. It felt like something real. Something he could feel.

The first inhale made him cough sharply and involuntarily, like his body still remembered how to resist. The second burned deeper, searing his throat like fire. Good. He wanted it to hurt. It had to mean he was still alive.

He walked on.

Past the temple where he once rang the bell before exams. Now the steps were cracked, the brass dulled, the priest asleep in a plastic chair. A woman sobbed quietly near the gate, clutching a photo. DV didn't glance twice.

A scooter skidded near the curb, the rider tumbling hard onto the asphalt. People rushed to help. DV didn't break stride. He didn't even blink. His heart, once a furnace of rage and then regret, now felt like stone. Not numb. Just... finished.

He passed a man slumped against a wall, muttering to himself, clutching a bottle of cheap alcohol. He moved past the scene, like a shadow. There but untouched.

Just like that, afternoon had bled into a bruised evening. DV's feet carried him to the edge of the city, to a half-built structure. Three floors of concrete skeleton rose against the sky, steel rods jutting from the roof like claws reaching for something they'd never grasp.

He climbed the stairs slowly, each step stirring up a thin veil of cement dust. His cheap rubber slippers left faint, temporary prints as if trying to prove he'd been there, even if no one cared.

At the top, he stood near the edge. Below, the city sprawled, indifferent. The wind snapped at his shirt rudely, tugging at him like a warning or a dare.

He thought of her—his mother, standing in the doorway the day they took him. Her face hadn't cracked. No tears. No words. Just that blank expression, like she'd already erased him.

Maybe she had always wanted this. Peace at any cost. Even if it meant sacrificing the only person who ever stood up for her.

The night hummed. Not soft like a lullaby. Sharp. Like it was daring him.

"Are you watching this, Bappa?" he muttered. "Hope you're enjoying the damn show." He looked up at the sky. It looked back, dark and silent.

"Checkmate, Bappa," he shouted. "You can't kill what's already dead."

He leaned forward a little. The wind howled around him, whispering promises of silence. Three floors below, the city blinked and buzzed, unaware of the boy standing on the brink.

One more inch and...

And then—

A beam of light sliced through the darkness. It hit the back of his neck, harsh and sudden. He flinched, instinctively stepping back from the edge. Behind him, footsteps crunched against the dust. Slow. Unhurried.

A voice followed: gruff, amused, strangely calm.

"You gonna jump or just came to rehearse the monologue?" The voice sliced through the night deep, dry, and completely unimpressed.

DV flinched, half-turning. A man stood a few feet away, partially lit by the flickering torch in his hand. Tall. Calm. One hand holding the torchlight and the other buried in his trouser pocket as though he'd wandered into a street play and decided to stay for the ending.

"If you're serious," the man said with his voice steady, "I'll wait. No rush."

DV stared at him, unsure whether to be angry or grateful. The man didn't blink. Didn't step forward. Just stood there like he'd seen this scene play out before, and knew exactly how it ended.

"Although, you don't look like the type," the man added. 

DV's mouth was dry. His fists tightened, knuckles pale. The voice behind him was smooth, almost amused, but laced with something older. Authority, maybe. Or just the kind of confidence that came from surviving too many things without flinching.

He glanced back, angrily shouting, "Who the hell are you?"

The man didn't move. Just stood there, half-lit by the torchlight, hand still buried in his pocket like he had nowhere better to be. "Someone who knows what it looks like when a boy stands where a man has to."

DV stared at him, the words hanging in the air. They didn't make sense. And yet—they did. Too much.

The man stepped forward, slow and deliberate, the beam of his torch skimming the rooftop like a searchlight.

"You think this is the end," he said. "But it's not."

DV looked down again. Cars passed like ants. A motorbike revved angrily in the distance. The sky pressed lower, like it wanted to crush him into the concrete.

"Jump," the man said simply. "Or walk. Either way, do it with your eyes open."

DV's chest burned. With shame. With cold. With... disbelief. "And why do you care?"

"I don't," the man said. "Not really." It had the weight of someone who'd seen too much and cared too little. The man took a step closer, boots scraping against gravel, torchlight flickering across the rooftop like a warning.

"You want to disappear? Fine. But don't dress it up as courage. You don't win. It's not checkmate. It's just quitting mid-game."

DV felt his pulse thrum in his ears.

"But if you walk away," the man continued, "you get to play again. You get a chance to win. You look tired, not finished." He paused, voice dipping into something almost akin to kindness.

"I can offer you a fresh chance. Maybe it's a bad idea. But bad ideas are still better than your worst one."

DV didn't answer.

The man turned, already walking way. "Your call," he said over his shoulder. And then he was gone, along with the torchlight, swallowed by the dark.

For a moment, DV stood frozen. Did he dream it? Or the man was really there?

The rooftop felt colder. The silence louder. That flicker of torchlight had been the only thing cutting through the void. A brief interruption in the darkness. A signal that someone had seen him. That someone had offered a way out.

Now it was gone. And all that remained was the edge beneath his feet, and the choice. Jump, and the night would claim him. Walk, and the unknown would begin.

The torchlight hadn't begged or pleaded. It had simply existed, like a door left ajar. Now it was up to him to decide whether to close it... or step through.

He chose to chase the light.

* * * 

Minutes after stepping back from the edge, DV sat at a grimy roadside tea stall, that smelled of burnt sugar and over-boiled milk. The plastic chair beneath him wobbled with every shift of weight, and the chipped glass of tea in front of him steamed like it was trying to escape.

Just like he had sometime back.

The man had introduced himself as Sehgal. Just a name. No explanation. No small talk. No pity. 

His gaze was steady, neither soft, nor cruel. Just the kind that had seen too much and learned not to flinch. It wasn't sympathy. Perhaps recognition?

He sat across from DV quickly for a while and then spoke. 

"You gonna tell me your story, or do I have to guess?" Not gently. Not harshly. Just directly.

It wasn't a question meant to comfort. It was meant to open something. He looked with eyes of a person who knew that truth didn't spill out on its own. You had to crack something first.

DV stared into his own glass of tea. The steam curled upward like ghosts escaping a grave. No one had ever asked him that before. Not like this. Not without a preconceived judgment. Not without a script.

And so, after a very long time, for the the very first time, he told his story.

He spoke of the house that never felt like home. Of the silence that screamed louder than fists. Of the night that changed everything —the blood, the stillness, the way the world shifted and never came back.

He spoke of prison. Of being seventeen and thrown in with men who'd stopped believing in anything that was remotely human. Of waiting for his mother to show up. Of realizing she never would.

Sehgal didn't interrupt. He didn't nod. He didn't flinch. His eyes stayed on DV the entire time—not probing, not pitying. Just watching. Like he was seeing the shape of DV's soul through the cracks.

There was something strange about him. Something DV couldn't name. Mysterious, yes. But also comforting. 

When DV finished, the tea had gone cold. But something inside him had shifted. Not healed. Not yet. But stirred.

"So you've got nothing," Sehgal said, placing down the half filled glass of tea that had gone cold. "No past worth saving. No people to become your weakness. That makes you dangerous. And very, very valuable."

DV stared at him, the words landing like a slap wrapped in silk. He didn't know whether to laugh or throw the tea in the man's face.

"So what—you gonna train me like some stray dog?"

Sehgal smiled, but it wasn't mocking. "No. I'm going to educate you. Train you if you want. Send you to college, if you want. Let you decide who you want to become." DV let out a bitter laugh, sharp and hollow.

"And then what? I owe you?"

"No," Sehgal said, calmly. "But if you become the man you're meant to be... maybe one day you'll choose to come back. Help me build something. Or crack something. Your call."

DV didn't respond right away. He just stared at the man across the table, trying to find the catch. The trap. The fine print. But there didn't seemed to be any.

It was the first offer he'd ever received that didn't come with pity or an IOU. No guilt. No strings. 

He didn't believe in saints or goodness. But he wasn't sure Sehgal was one anyway. And maybe that was the point.

The tea had gone cold. DV kept stealing sideways glances at the man across from him, trying to make sense of him. He had been around the lack of goodness for too long to trust anything that looked like it. 

"You're not that much older than me," DV said eventually. The man might have been a few years older, perhaps three or more. The words came out more like suspicion than observation. He couldn't understand why someone like Sehgal would be generous. People didn't just offer things, not without a catch.

Sehgal glanced up, one brow arched. "I'm old enough to know what not to waste time on."

DV frowned, eyes drifting to the man's polished boots, the crisp shirt, the way he carried himself like the world bent slightly around him.

"Still," DV muttered, "you've got the clean boots, the crisp shirt. You don't look like someone who has had your ribs broken just for breathing."

"Money does that," Sehgal said simply, brushing an invisible thread from his sleeve. "It gives you the luxury of looking like you've got it all."

DV snorted. "So that's it, huh? You buy peace of mind?"

"No," Sehgal said, leaning forward slightly. "You buy space. Distance. Loyalty. Time. You buy silence when the world wants to scream at you. You buy power that doesn't need to shout."

"Does it make you happy?"

Sehgal didn't answer right away. He looked past DV, out toward the street where the night moved slowly, like it was listening. Then he spoke, not with certainty, but with the weight of someone who'd already made peace with the answer.

"Yes," he said finally. "Because I remember what it's like to be desperate. Happiness is knowing you'll eat tomorrow. That no one can put a price on your dignity. That you can say 'no' and walk away. That nothing can take anything away from you. It's about being the one in control."

DV absorbed that in silence. Across the street, a metal shutter slammed down and made both of them blink. The city never slept, but it sure liked to remind people that nothing stayed open forever.

He looked at Sehgal again, this time not with suspicion, but with the faintest whisper of possibility. Not trust. Just the curiosity of a boy who'd never been offered a future he could name.

"You think I can get there?" DV asked, voice low.

"You're already there," the man said, rising to his feet. "You just don't know how to steer yet."

He dropped a small contact card on the table.  "When you're done trying to prove the universe wrong, call me."

DV stared at the card.His fingers curled around it once. Then twice. Just enough to remind him it was real. However not sure whether to burn it or build his entire life on it.

Sehgal had already turned to leave, his silhouette folding into the night.

"Wait," DV said, voice cutting through the air like a snapped wire.

The man paused but didn't turn.

DV cleared his throat, the wind rising around them, carrying the scent of rain and something heavier.

"I still don't get it," he said, getting up from the chair. "You talk like you've cracked some big code. Is that all life is? Power, money, leverage? That's supposed to make it worth it?"

Sehgal's shoes scraped against the muddy side of the road as he shifted his weight. Still facing away, hands buried in his pockets.

"No," he said. "But it's a start."

DV stepped forward. "So what, I chase money? That's the plan? Money makes me someone and suddenly I sleep better?"

Sehgal finally looked back. His pitch black eyes didn't soften. They narrowed, sharp as glass.

"You think the world owes you something. A reward for surviving? It doesn't."

"I'm not asking for—"

"You did," Sehgal interrupted. "You wanted to know what makes it bearable. You wanted a shortcut out of pain. There isn't one. You earn everything. People's respect. Their compliance. Your place in the room. Your seat on the table. Even your peace, you claw that out inch by inch, and it still slips away when you blink."

DV swallowed hard. The words hit harder than any sentence he'd served. They didn't offer comfort. They offered a harsh truth.

Sehgal walked back toward him, not threatening, just closer. Measured.

"You've had one lesson: that the world can gut you without warning. Here's the second, sometimes you fight not to win, but because losing on your feet is better than anything else."

DV's jaw tightened. "And if it still breaks you?"

Sehgal didn't even bother blinking before answering, "Then you keep breaking until the edges become sharp enough to cut back. You become the weapon."

He held DV's gaze a beat longer, "This isn't charity," he said. "This is me giving you a shovel. Whether you dig yourself a grave or a foundation... is up to you."

DV's voice dropped. "Why me?"

The man looked at him for a long moment, then nodded toward the rooftop they had been at, in the distance.

"I own that building," he said. "Years ago, I stood exactly where you did tonight. Only difference was, I had strings attached. Expectations. Promises. I couldn't take the step." He paused, eyes distant.

Then continued, "When I look back now, I realize I was foolish. Thought I had no way out. Thought pain was the whole story. Thought life was unfair. "

His gaze returned to DV, sharp again. "I saw that same foolishness in you. So I threw a net. It's the least I can do."

Then he turned and walked towards a parked black car. 

DV watched silently as the car zoom past him. He then went back into the building, this time with the card in hand.

Maybe the man hadn't wanted him to jump off his building and trigger a messy investigation. Maybe it was just self-interest. But there had been something in his voice, something stripped of pity. Something honest. Somethimg that was humanly kind. And DV had never seen that before.

The stairwell smelled of damp concrete and rust. When he reached the rooftop, the air was thicker, more humid, and still. The storm hadn't broken yet, but it was close. Any minute from now.

DV glanced around, at the broken slabs, the rust-bleeding rods, the scattered rubble. It didn't look like much. An unfinished skeleton. The kind of place stray dogs slept in. The kind of place a lost boy thought about dying.

It didn't make sense. Why build something and leave it half-done?

Unless the point wasn't the walls or the ceilings.

Maybe the point was what didn't collapse, what stood the test of time.

He walked to the center of the rooftop, toeing an empty cement bag, then looked up. Past the wires. Past the low haze choking the air. The city stretched out in every direction, indifferent and endless.

The man he had met, wasn't much older than him. But he stood like someone who had killed something in himself and replaced it with something powerful. Not peace. Not healing. Just control. 

He liked that. 

DV looked down at the card again. It wasn't a lifeline. It was a lever.

And then out of nowhere, a strong lightning cracked.

Just a flicker. A jagged pulse across the clouds, brief, blinding, gone.

But it lit everything for a second. For a moment, everything was visible. The rooftop. The city. The unfinished building. The boy who hadn't jumped. The card in his hand.

In the darkness of night, it's the flicker of light that reminds you the void isn't absolute.

And then a roar tore across the sky. Raw, rising, unmistakable, like the first cry of a cub who'd grown into a lion.

Not a warning.

A beginning.

* * *

My writing has become rusty I believe (and slower). But after a long time, I enjoyed writing. I hope you enjoyed reading.

Look forward to reading your thoughts.

That's a much younger version of Aadarsh that you see than what he was in Better Together. Would love to read your take on that.

Also, I am pretty excited for the next chapter. It's going to drop soon. 👀

Don't forget to vote ☆ on the chapters!

–Anami!♡