An hour later, Abhi woke up, unsure if he had been knocked out or if he had simply laid there, unable or unwilling to move. He glanced around with droopy eyes and found himself in an empty room. Standing up, he tightly held his slightly aching head and brushed the dust off his now-wrinkled clothes. For a moment, he stood frozen in time, motionless, staring blankly ahead.

After about a minute, he walked into the factory, only to be met with indifference from the employees who were hard at work. After half a minute, one employee noticed Abhi. The employee grabbed something and approached him, handing over a bucket filled with tools. Not looking Abhi in the eye, he said, "Sir Anand has decided not to cut your payment, but only on the condition that you clean the entire building after you finish your shift." He paused for a second, took a deep breath, and added, "He also asked me to remind you not to forget about the washrooms."

...

Abhi worked until midnight to complete his shift. During this time, he didn't speak a single word to anyone, as if he were not truly awake. At the end of the day, as another began, the employees sat down to rest for a few minutes before leaving for home. Abhi joined them, but throughout this time, none of them looked at him or spoke to one another. Their silence was due to the pity and guilt they felt in their hearts. To Abhi, everything was just numb.

As the employees started to leave, Abhi found himself alone once again, yet he showed no change in his expression—he didn’t have an expression at all. His mind was in limbo, trapped by the trauma he had experienced. While everyone walked away, one employee stood beside Abhi and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.

Instinctively, Abhi looked toward the employee. His eyes reflected a deep sense of guilt and pity, but there was also a glimmer of brotherhood and strength. Without a single word exchanged, this stranger had connected with Abhi’s soul. Just like that, with the last employee walking away, Abhi found himself alone again; however, he didn’t feel lonely anymore.

...

After working another three hours to clean the entire building, Abhi, utterly exhausted, finally finished his tasks and prepared to leave. The Shivantar Metal Factory was active almost all day all year round, so by the time Abhi stepped outside, a new batch of workers and another supervisor had already arrived. He paid no attention to them, and they, in turn, did not pay much attention to him.

Except for a few people in the room who directly witnessed Abhi's bullying no one knew what had happened to him, most assumed he was just a cleaner hired by the company and didn't think twice about him. Despite trying his hardest to work efficiently, he was zoned out for much of the time, limping over machines and leaning on benches for rest, the spectators simply assumed he was some kind of addict, high on drugs or alcohol, an ungrateful person who failed to appreciate having a job.

As he walked away from the company's premises, Abhi stopped in his tracks after just a few seconds. While walking, he coincidentally crossed paths with a group he was somewhat familiar with; the gang of pranksters who had tried to follow him after failing to prank him earlier. At almost the same moment, the gang noticed Abhi as well. It took them a second to realize who he was; previously, Abhi had been an energetic kid in a high-class school dress code, but now he resembled a junkie, wearing a dirty and wrinkled khaki shirt and pants, along with moist yet dusty boots.

Immediately a sinister grin appeared on the gang members who had been splashed by the dog water. He ran towards Abhi with full speed and the rest of the gang followed. All of them weren't much older than him yet they looked far less naive and a bit more cynical. Abhi was in no condition to run, let alone run fast enough to juke so many people, so he didn't.

With rugged steps, the main gangster caught up to Abhi and grabbed him by the collar. The gangster was a bit surprised that this previously swift and agile rat didn't try to run away from him, instead, he just stood there, still like a statue with a soulless face.

But without thinking much about it, he punched Abhi in the face and pushed him to the ground, ruining his already dirty and wrinkly clothes even further, then the entire gang came in and all of them started to kick him brutally.

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Abhi groaned in pain but his face still remained emotionless, the gangsters kept loudly cursing at him to 'teach him a lesson': "Pussy! Did you really think running away would have saved your ass after you disrespected me? What a DUMBASS! Apologize to me loser and I'll think about forgiving you. Beg for your life bitch." The kicking never stopped.

Upon hearing the commotion outside, a few employees inside the company came out running. Seeing them come out in numbers, the gang stopped their assault and ran with their tails between their legs. "Don't forget this bitch, don't ever try to get in my way ever again." Said the smoking junkie without a hint of irony.

The employees saw the backs of the perpetrators quickly running away, some of them were going to chase them but they quickly noticed that the victim of their assault was the same ungrateful drunk kid not taking the job he was blessed with seriously.

"It's really that guy again? Holy shit how much of a bum can he be. Being a junkie at such a young age too?"

"Kids these days man! They make me terrified for my son's future… Should we try to help him or something?"

"Let's just leave him be, he probably owed those runts some gambling money or something, it's not wise for us to get involved in these degenerate matters. He probably got into this situation himself, let him face the consequence of his actions." Some of the employees said while looking at the now mangled body of Abhi.

Suddenly, Abhi who was lying on the floor took a deep breath in and tried to stand up; only to trip and fall again. He tried again and again while his muscles shivered, his stomach ached with nauseating boils and his lungs quaked gasping for air. After a while, he finally started to walk again with a mostly limp body and a pathetic gait.

Seeing this, some employees felt guilt and compassion, but their assumptions about Abhi's character overshadowed their feelings. At the end of the day, they believed that helping him would yield no benefit. They didn't know him well, and there was a risk of facing backlash for spending time assisting him instead of focusing on their work, worst of all, he would probably never change. Ultimately, they all ignored him and returned to their tasks.

Now, Abhi was truly alone, walking the path of solitude back home on the unrelenting streets of fate.

…

On his crooked walk home, Abhi was greeted with the pleasant chill of the desert's night. Nixom was comparatively warmer at night than the rest of Erg desert, because it existed inside a crater, this made it intangible to most wind currents swirling on the flat parts of the deserted land outside of the crater. Yet a few obscure currents of wind bypassed this intangibility and gently caressed Abhi's expressionless face.

The streets were mostly empty, with only the flickering lights of old, broken street lamps beside the battered road beneath Abhi's mangled boots. Other than the occasional few Night-Life gangsters roaming around, no one really took night walks down in Low City.

For once in Abhi's hectic day, he was finally left truly alone in the serene atmosphere of the night, the cold gusts of wind were slightly whistling in his ears creating a gentle symphony fitting for this solace setting.

Yet Abhi's body and head were in pain, and his soul numb.

He kept emotionlessly limping across the tread, disregarding his pain and suffering. He felt nothing… no, he felt like nothing. Yet, he kept striding forward…

In his unconscious walk home, he suddenly stopped. In a still position, he painfully tried to stand upright, somehow barely managing to do it while looking down, He slowly observed his tranquil surroundings and sighed:

"I have been in this place for a few months now, but never took the opportunity to appreciate its night sky, did I?"

Upon saying that to himself, he slowly looked up as his hair gently fluttered in the chill breeze.

The marvel reflected in Abhi's eyes was a mesmerizing tapestry woven around the curvature of the world, with countless drops of twinkling stars contrasting against the bluish-black framework of the universe. The Milky Way stretched across the sky like a faint milky river of illuminating stars, a celestial reminder of the endlessly expanding cosmos.

For a minute or so, Abhi just stood there, motionlessly… His eyes didn't dare to blink. Even though this view was eternal, this moment was finite. But slowly, this spectacle of the vibrant and sharp sky filled with endless brilliance... started to blur.

The scenery edged into the core of Abhi's memories seemed to have re-sparked an extinguished flame within his mind, A flame that laid dormant deep within Abhi for the past few hours- no, much, much longer than that.

Abhi finally closed his eyes and tears rolled down his face, only to be obstructed by corners of Abhi's lips curling up into a shuddering smile.

After having a blunt face for hours, Abhi's first expression was extremely abnormal; but in an unreal way, the sorrow and pain-filled nature of tears and the carefree and joyous nature of a smile blended together in an abstract....

harmony of contradiction.

..........