88.8 MHz – Philosophy United Radio
Your favorite broadcast from the belly of the beast...
> Murphy: January 3rd, 2000. 5:42 PM. The day slipped past him. Maybe that's all healing is—missing time until it stops hurting.
Ainz-sama: Transmission 4 – "To-Break." Even stones can shatter if they've remembered too much.
Guest Voices
Moin Akhtar: "Waqt sab kuch sikhata hai... bas aap sun'te raho."
Orpheus: "I turned around once. I won't do it again."
Ruth from the Bible: "Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay."
A Quilt Stitched by a Mother Long Gone: "I held him when no one else did. And I still do."
---
The sun had begun to fall.
Its light no longer golden—just orange, tired, and reluctant.
Like a lantern losing oil.
And in that pale hour of surrender, a child's eyes opened.
Not to hunger.
Not to pain.
But to the faint crunch of gravel under polished leather shoes.
---
The courtyard was dim.
The walls absorbed warmth like secrets.
The water pot in the corner shimmered with light like it remembered prayer.
On the charpai, Arslan stirred.
His blanket—a thick, clean woolen shawl—held the memory of a grandmother's sigh and a grandfather's pride.
He had slept too long.
And yet, not long enough.
Not for what waited.
---
The man standing near his grandfather wasn't a soldier.
He didn't carry weight in his chest or judgment in his jaw.
He wore glasses, tilted from the ride.
His kurta was white, but not spotless.
His hands were soft—softer than Arslan remembered any man's hands being.
The doctor did not speak.
Not at first.
He knelt slowly.
Toes grounded, back curved, eyes below the level of the child's chin.
He lowered himself the way one might approach a dying bird or a lost prayer.
---
"Beta," he said.
Not loudly.
Not sweetly.
Just... gently.
"How do you feel?"
The words were air.
Not heavy enough to threaten.
Not cold enough to alarm.
But something inside flinched.
---
It wasn't a scream.
It wasn't a slap.
It wasn't a shout in the heat of Karachi,
Or the snap of a belt across his back.
It wasn't his father's drunken curses,
Or the steel toe of a boot meant for his ribs.
It was none of those things.
And that was the problem.
Because the body remembered fear like a friend.
And kindness...
Kindness was a stranger wearing someone else's smile.
---
His shoulders jumped.
His knees twitched.
And his small, cracked hands pulled the shawl higher.
He didn't know why.
He didn't know why the softness made his breath stumble.
Why the warmth made his chest burn.
Why being seen made his eyes sting.
But it did.
It all did.
And without warning—
He cried.
---
Not loud.
Not performative.
Not for mercy.
It was not a wail.
Not a sob.
Not even a broken child's lament.
It was a release.
A quiet weeping.
Saltless.
Nameless.
Endless.
Like something ancient
Had loosened
Its grip
Inside his ribs.
---
No one moved.
The doctor placed a hand on Arslan's foot—just resting there.
Grounding.
Not possessing.
Malik Riyaz looked away.
Not because he was ashamed.
But because dignity was a curtain he refused to pull from his grandson's face.
Grandmother whispered a dua from behind the door.
Her voice trembled.
And for the first time in two lives,
Arslan cried,
not because he was weak,
but because he could.
---
The doctor left an hour later.
He said the boy was healthy.
Suffering no fever.
No concussion.
No signs of physical harm.
Just... exhausted.
"Emotionally overwhelmed," he said, with a voice that didn't fit the village.
He left behind a glass bottle of vitamins.
And a silence that lingered long after he was gone.
---
That night, Arslan didn't speak.
He didn't look anyone in the eye.
But when his grandmother placed her hand on his head and kissed his forehead—
He did not flinch.
And when his grandfather sat beside him on the charpai and said nothing—
Arslan didn't move away.
That was enough.
For now.
For a boy who had never known safety,
this was a war won in silence.
---
Orpheus: "He cried... not for Eurydice.
But because he remembered the silence before her."