Rayan's room was a tomb of shadows. A faint, dying sliver of light from a distant streetlamp flickered against the damp, peeling walls, barely cutting through the gloom. He didn't need to turn on the lights—darkness was no stranger to him; he had lived within it for as long as he could remember. Staring up at the cracked ceiling, a haunting question echoed in the void of his mind: How long can a human survive without sleep?
Three days? No—maybe four.
The thoughts inside his head were like jagged glass, cutting into his sanity. Failure, humiliation, rejection—all of them screamed in a deafening chorus, yet the world outside remained silent. No one heard his silent plea. No one even tried to look into his hollow eyes. To the world, he was a ghost, a remnant of a past that everyone wanted to forget. He checked the time on his glowing phone screen and let out a dry, broken laugh. 3:17 AM. At this hour, the rest of the world was tucked away in dreams. Everyone—except him. He stood up slowly, his bones aching with a weariness that went deeper than physical exhaustion. He pulled on his worn-out jacket, careful not to look in the mirror. There was nothing left in his reflection that he recognized anymore. So, he lay back down in the heavy silence, waiting for a morning that offered no hope.
In the suffocating quiet, memories of his childhood began to bleed into his mind. Once, his life had been a canvas of vibrant colors. He remembered the smell of the sterile lab where his parents worked—the most brilliant scientists of their time. They weren't just parents; they were heroes in white aprons. He remembered sitting on a swivel chair, spinning around while his father adjusted a microscope.
"Rayan, look at this," his father would say, beckoning him over. "The Earth hides secrets that can save humanity. One day, you will be the one to guard thesesecrets."
His mother would bring them tea and snacks, her smile warm enough to melt any worry. She used to stroke his hair and tell him stories of how minerals were like stars trapped underground. He remembered a specific evening when they were celebrating a breakthrough. They had found a rare, shimmering metal—a substance so powerful it could provide clean energy for the entire planet. But as the days passed, their smiles turned into masks of anxiety. They realized that the government didn't want to save the world; they wanted to build a weapon that could end it. They spoke of J. Robert Oppenheimer in hushed, terrified tones, vowing they would not let their discovery become another tool of death.
"We have to hide it, Maya," his father had whispered one night. "If they find the data, the world will burn."
In a desperate act of protection, they burned every file, every hard drive, and every note. And then, they did something unthinkable to save the metal from falling into the wrong hands. They used a sophisticated, painless procedure to hide the small fragment of the metal inside little Rayan's own body—deep within his tissue where no ordinary scanner could find it.
The end came swiftly. When the government realized the data was gone and the scientists wouldn't speak, they were branded as traitors. Rayan, only six years old, watched from the shadows as his heroes were taken away and silenced forever. The news headlines screamed that they had sold national secrets to enemies. It was a lie that the world swallowed whole.
Rayan was sent to an orphanage, but it wasn't a place of refuge. It was a prison of judgment. "Traitor's son," the older boys would sneer as they pushed him into the mud. The teachers looked at him with pity that felt like poison. Even those he tried to call friends eventually turned their backs, whispered to by their parents to stay away from the "son of the enemies." He grew up with stones thrown at his back and insults hurled at his name. Eventually, he couldn't take the suffocating hate anymore. He ran away, disappearing into the fringes of society, living like a stray dog until he found a place to hide his identity.
Now, at fourteen, he was a student at a high school where no one knew his past. He worked twice as hard as anyone else, driven by a silent need to prove he wasn't what they called his parents. He became the school topper. For the first time in years, he felt a flicker of joy. He had friends—or so he thought. And he had her.
He loved her with every shattered piece of his soul. She was the topper too, and they spent hours studying together, sharing dreams of a future far away from this city. Rayan felt he had finally found a home in her heart. But Jin, a boy from a wealthy, influential family, hated Rayan. Jin was jealous of Rayan's intellect and the way the teachers praised him. Jin began a calculated game of friendship, slowly gaining Rayan's trust, laughing with him during lunch, all while plotting his downfall.
One evening, Jin followed Rayan to his dilapidated shack. While Rayan was out at work, Jin broke in. He searched through Rayan's meager belongings until he found an old, scorched locket containing a picture of his parents in their lab. He recognized the faces from the old history books about the "Traitors of the Earth."
The next day, the school was a battlefield of whispers. By noon, everyone knew. The "Topper" was the son of the people who had tried to destroy the country. The transition from admiration to absolute disgust was instantaneous. People stepped aside in the hallways as if he carried a plague.
But the true destruction happened in his heart. Rayan dropped out of school, unable to face the daily torture. He took a job at a local store, where the owner treated him like a slave. Because he was a "traitor's son," the owner knew Rayan couldn't go to the police. He made Rayan work sixteen-hour shifts, often refusing to pay him for the overtime. Rayan took the abuse, the exhaustion, and the hunger, holding onto the hope that the girl he loved still cared.
That hope was incinerated on a rainy Tuesday night. While walking home from the store, his body trembling from fatigue, he saw them. Under the dim light of a secluded alleyway, he saw his girlfriend with Jin. They weren't just talking. They were locked in an intimate, physical embrace, their closeness leaving no room for doubt. The sight was a physical blow to his chest, more painful than any beating he had ever received.
The next morning, Rayan stood before her, his voice a ghost of its former self. "How could you?" he asked, his eyes wet with tears he couldn't stop. "I loved you. I trusted you with everything."
She didn't even look guilty. She adjusted her bag and looked at him with a cold, piercing gaze. "Love? Rayan, don't be pathetic. I was only with you because you were the topper. You did my assignments, you gave me your notes, and being with the smartest guy made me popular. But look at you now. You're a dropout working in a grocery store. And more than that—you're the son of a traitor. Jin has everything you don't. He has status, he has money, and he isn't a shadow of a dead criminal."
Jin stood behind her, a smug, triumphant grin on his face. "Go back to your hole, Rayan," he mocked. "Even your 'friends' only liked you because you were useful. Now, you're just trash."
Rayan turned away without a word. The betrayal was complete. His parents were dead because they tried to save a world that now spat on their son. His love was a lie. His friends were leeches. The metal inside him, the last legacy of his parents, felt like a heavy stone dragging him toward the earth.
The night grew deeper, the air thick with the scent of rain and sorrow. Rayan walked past the streets that had never welcomed him, past the school that had rejected him, until he reached the old, rusted bridge over the black, swirling river.
Standing on that broken bridge, staring into the biting wind, he thought—
If the pain never ends… then why should I stay?
No one called out to him.
No one tried to stop him.
Rayan jumped.