A few days before the night of the rain…
He woke up staring at the ceiling fan above him, its slow rotation creaking in the silence. The room was bare — no posters, no furniture, just four pale walls and a single mattress on the floor. He was twenty-two.
His eyes were open, but they weren't seeing the room. They were looking inward, to a place he had buried long ago.
He tried to remember his parents. But the truth was, he couldn't. There were no faces. No voices. No memories of warmth. From the first day his mind could recall, he had been inside the orphanage — a place that called itself a home but felt more like a cage.
The other boys there had fists instead of hands. They beat him for food, for clothes, for nothing at all. And he never fought back. Not once.
Because even as a child, he had understood one thing:
Love wasn't made for him.
And maybe, he wasn't made for love.
"Since the beginning, I've been alone," he thought, staring at the fan. "No one's ever asked me if I was okay. No one's ever stayed."
He had grown up on that belief like it was the only truth in the world. Pain became a habit. Silence became a shield.
The years passed. The beatings grew harsher. The orphanage darker. Until one night, at twelve years old, he ran.
No plan. No map. No family waiting on the other side. Just the small, trembling hands of a boy who knew he couldn't survive one more day in that place.
He remembered the streets — cold, wet, endless. He remembered hunger like it was a living thing crawling inside him. He remembered sleeping in corners where no one could find him.
Dying, he thought, would be easy. Easier than living. But something inside him refused.
"No. Not like this. I'm not done."
That voice kept him alive. It was small, but it was stubborn.
So he worked. He studied when he could. He took whatever jobs came — cleaning, delivering, lifting, anything. There was no time for school, no time for dreams. But he endured.
He found a tiny rented room years later, barely big enough for his mattress. It had no kitchen, no comfort, no window to the world. He ate there. Slept there. Breathed there. Alone. Always alone.
People passed through his life sometimes — co-workers, strangers, fleeting faces. But he never reached for them.
"What's the point?" he would whisper to himself. "They'll leave. Everyone leaves."
And so, his life became a quiet cycle of survival. A boy who had never been held, never been taught how to live, learning on his own.
And yet, in the deepest part of his heart, there was still a flicker — a small, dangerous flicker — that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't meant to be alone forever.
He had long stopped trusting anyone.
He spoke to people, yes, but never with them. Words came out of his mouth like empty coins dropped on a table — polite, functional, hollow. He never smiled.
Yet in his eyes, there was something. A quiet, unsettling light that made strangers pause, that made people whisper about him when he left. It wasn't warmth. It wasn't joy. It was the light of someone different, someone who didn't belong.
No one could figure him out. Not really.
He handled his life alone, like a soldier in a war no one else could see. He did his work by himself. Fought his battles by himself. Never asked for help, no matter how heavy the burden grew.
He didn't want money. Not really. He didn't want friends. Or love. Or ties. Or enemies. All he wanted — all he had ever wanted — was a little peace. A little happiness. Nothing more.
"No one is my enemy," he would think. "And I am no one's enemy. I don't want to fight. I don't even like fighting."
He stayed out of people's lives. Didn't meddle. Didn't chase. Didn't cling.
He had rules — quiet rules, carved into his bones over years of pain:
No cigarettes.
No alcohol.
No chasing women.
No addictions.
No illusions.
He lived by those rules not because he was pure, but because he had nothing left to lose.
"Life," he told himself, "I only want to live it. With a little peace. With a little happiness. That's all."
The world could talk. Let it. People would always talk. It was their nature. He didn't hate them for it. He didn't even feel anger anymore.
Because he knew — more than they ever would — what his life was, what it had cost, and what it meant to survive it.
It wasn't that he hated people.
It wasn't that he didn't like talking to them.
He did. He spoke to them. He helped them. He gave love where he could — but he never asked for it back. Never.
If someone needed a hand, he offered it. If someone was broken, he tried to mend them. But when the work was done, he left. Quietly. Without waiting for thanks, without asking for anything.
And people… some of them took advantage. Some used his kindness, drained it until there was nothing left. And he let them. He never complained. He never confronted. He simply moved on, carrying the weight of his silence like a second skin.
Life was hard for him. Harder than anyone knew.
And living — that was even harder.
He was stuck in a cycle he didn't know how to break. He wanted a little happiness, a little peace — just enough to breathe without feeling like he was drowning. But even that felt like a puzzle he couldn't solve.
Where does one begin?
How do you start over when you've never been taught how to start at all?
His loneliness had become so deep it was almost a physical thing — a dark ocean that he couldn't climb out of.
He had never learned to love himself. Never even tried. Eating, sleeping, taking care of himself — these were chores he often neglected. He would go without food. Without rest. Illness crept in like a shadow, but he didn't flinch.
He wasn't afraid of dying.
What he feared — quietly, secretly — was living this way forever.
Sometimes, when the thought of death crossed his mind, he would even smile. Not out of joy, but out of a strange, bitter amusement.
"So this is it? This is what it feels like?"
It wasn't a death wish. Not exactly. It was a man standing on the edge of his own life, wondering if there was anything left worth stepping back for.