Some wounds don't bleed. They just stay.
It had been another long day for Rayyan.
Becoming an engineer in a construction company was supposed to feel like a dream come true. For someone who grew up with nothing, just having a stable job should have been enough. Every morning, he woke up hoping life would finally get easier—that he could live instead of simply survive.
But reality never matched the dream.
Most people worked to live.Rayyan worked to stay alive.
He carried the weight of a childhood that never left him. A story written long before he could understand it. A story that began in 1988.
Rayyan was born the second child in a poor family—a home filled with struggle and shattered tenderness. People in the neighborhood whispered that his family was cursed. But Rayyan never believed that. Because in that same home, he had his mother—a gentle warrior who shielded her children with love stronger than iron.
She believed education was the only path out. She worked multiple jobs—washing clothes, ironing for neighbours, sewing when she could—while enduring the tempers of a man whose heart had once been good, but had long since splintered.
Rayyan grew up watching his mother get beaten. Not because she did anything wrong, but because his father could not control the storms inside him. The man was not evil. His kindness had been drowned by anger, exhaustion, and the crushing pressure of poverty. And Rayyan's mother bore the wounds of it, silently, because leaving wasn't an option when survival depended on two hands instead of one.
Yet both parents worked tirelessly to feed their children.
Life was not kind, but it was theirs to endure.
Rayyan was fourteen when blood first ran down his face.
He had been helping his father repair their old car. They couldn't afford a mechanic. His father did all the fixes himself. Rayyan's job was to pass tools and hold parts where needed.
He knew that one slip, one moment of weakness, could ignite anger.
And that day, his hands betrayed him.
His fingers trembled.The engine shaft slipped.His father didn't shout.He kicked.
Rayyan fell backward, head crashing hard against a metal frame. Warm blood ran down his skin.
But he did not cry. Crying would only make things worse.
So he bowed his head and continued helping. Silent, dizzy, in pain—but obedient.
By the time the sun began to set, the bleeding slowed. He sat on the ground, exhausted, shirt stiff with dried blood.
That was when his mother returned from her ironing job.
Her face broke the moment she saw him. Without a word, she lifted him onto her bicycle and pedaled to the nearest clinic. The money she earned that day—every sen of it—paid for his three stitches.
No one spoke about that day again.
In their home, pain had no place to rest.Pain was expected.Pain was normal.
Years passed.
The day came when Rayyan received his high school examination results.
He woke early and wore his favorite green shirt—the only shirt that made him feel like something good might happen. He walked to school with hope in his chest.
And life, for once, rewarded him.
He passed with excellent results.
For the first time, the future did not look like an empty road. He applied to every scholarship he could find. He prayed with a sincerity only the desperate understand.
Weeks passed.
The results came.
Rayyan walked to the small cyber café near his house. He logged into the computer with trembling hands. The screen loaded slowly, painfully.
And then—
Rejection.
Every one of them.
Scholarships denied.Public university application rejected.
Dreams don't shatter like glass.They collapse quietly—into the deepest parts of a person.
He stepped outside and walked without direction. The world around him carried on—cars, chatter, laughter—but Rayyan felt like he didn't exist in any of it.
That was when he heard someone call his name.
Aydan.
A classmate.Rich. Well-dressed. Well-mannered.
The kind of person who never had to survive to live.
But unlike others, Aydan never looked down on Rayyan. He sat beside him under the old rain tree outside the school gate. He didn't ask what happened. He didn't pry. He simply sat—and that alone felt like kindness.
After a silence that didn't need words, Aydan spoke.
"You got your results, right?"
Rayyan nodded.
"And the scholarships?"
Rayyan's throat tightened. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The silence said enough.
Aydan leaned back, eyes tracing the sky.
"Apply for private university," he said.
Rayyan let out a short, bitter laugh.
"With what money?" he whispered.
Aydan turned to him, expression calm and sincere.
"I'll help you," he said."I'll talk to my father. We'll figure it out. You deserve a chance."
Rayyan blinked.
He didn't know whether to cry or to reject the kindness out of fear. But he followed Aydan anyway—to the same cyber café where his dreams had died moments ago.
He didn't even have an email address.Hope had never needed one.
Aydan guided him step by step.Name.Password.Apply.
A new identity.A new possibility.A new path.
But Rayyan's mind was not silent.
What if Aydan changes his mind?What if his father refuses?What if this is just another dream meant to break him later?
It is a dangerous thing—to offer hope to someone who has learned to live without it.
Rayyan stared at the glowing screen.
And in that glow, the future began.
But he did not know one thing:
Even the purest kindness casts a shadow—and Aydan's lightwould someday cast a very dark one