Zayden lived in a rundown apartment in a neighbourhood full of similar looking buildings, where the least expensive living was located at. He did not have anyone to depend on financially and as he worked part time as a night shift clerk at a nearby convenient store, he chose this apartment for its cheap price, but he could never imagine the struggle he was about to face.

The tenants living here were just like him, making ends meet while living in a financially poor environment. The owner of the apartment was an old man was the first person he met when he approached to look for a place to stay and decided on the terms of his stay and the weekly rent, which Zayden was happy. That one week went by without fuss but that weekend was when things took a turn for the worse.

The real problems began when the first week came around when, instead of the old man, a young man appeared demanding for their rent money. He looked around his mid-thirties with unkept beard and dishevelled appearance that seemed to give of the vibe that he was a man with bad nature.

He did not come alone as six other musclier men arrived followed him from behind with menacing looks on their faces. Zayden had watched as he and his men terrorised the apartment’s tenants to hand over their rent to him, punching those that were slow in giving it or outright beat up people that said they needed a little bit of time.

Not liking this one bit, Zayden walked towards them confidently and said, “Excuse me.”

“What? You came here with the rent?”

“Yes, but I will give it to the old man,” said Zayden firmly.

For a moment, the man eyed him with a raised eyebrow before saying, “No need for that. Hand it to me.”

Denying his demand, Zayden stood his ground and replied firmly, “I can’t. I talked over with the old man and he’s the owner of this building, so I’ll hand it to him.”

Once again, there was silence in the air as everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look in their direction. Several of the tenants were holding their breath as they looked on with horrified expressions on their faces.

This time, the man fully turned to face him as he gave him his undivided attention and asked, “So, you will give it to the old man and not me?”

“That’s right,” replied Zayden firmly, “and besides, I don’t know who you are.”

The man scoffed at that and asked, “Oh! So, you don’t know who I am?” He let out a loud mirthless laughter before calming down and looking sinisterly at him as he said, “Why don’t we introduce ourselves then?”

As the man completed saying those words, Zayden suddenly felt a heavy impact to his side and he flew towards the side before crashing heavily in the wall. Then he limply rolled over and fell flat on the ground while crying out in pain.

The person that had launched that surprise attack was one of the large goons that followed the man. Just then, the man pulled out a cigar and lightened it and began puffing as the burly man went after Zayden.

The beating that Zayden received could be described as being beaten black and blue while making him bleed heavily. He was a slim figure while the burly man seemed to be quite strong as he dished out beating after beating against the poor young man that could not put any kind of defence against such savagery.

“Alright. That’s enough,” said the man, and the burly dropped Zayden heavily on the ground.

Zayden lay on the ground, groaning and moaning in pain from how badly his body was hurt when the man walked over and knelt beside him.

“I think that’s enough of an introduction, don’t you think?” He asked before letting out a chuckle. “Now, pay the rent, you stupid pig!”

With that insult, he got up and walked away, leaving behind a barely conscious Zayden. After a few seconds later, the man came back and snarled at him whether he wanted to get a reintroduction. Unwilling to go through that again, Zayden obediently handed over the rent money to him before the man went away.

The tenants of the apartment remained there for a while after the man and his goons left when they they too departed from there. No one among them felt the need to check up on him, wonder how he was, or even go to check up on him to see if he was alright.

Zayden finally came to and got off his feet and while managing to contain the immense pain, he decided to go about his daily business. He had hoped inwardly that this would be the last time he would deal with them, but that was when the nightmarish ordeal began.

The man and his goons appeared every weekend on the last day of the weekend and demanded rent. The only small addition to this was that he had his goons bully, insult, and even beat Zayden up whenever he would show up in front of them regardless of whether he was there to give them the rent money or just going about his daily business.

As such, he constantly went to the university in bruises and cuts that made him look like a thug. People began whispering negatively about him and began distance themselves from him as they did not want to associate with an unruly person.

It was during that time when Zayden first met a girl, who had stumbled and fell while carrying lots of books in the library.

“Are you okay?” He asked with concern and lent her hand his hand.

“Ah. Thank you. I’m fine,” she replied cheerfully and taking his extended hand. “By the way, my name is Serena. What’s yours?”

He momentarily hesitated, thinking about the bad rumours about him, but he disregarded it and introduced himself as, “My name is Zayden.”

“Hi, Zayden. Thank you for your help,” she thanked him happily.

That was how the two began conversing with one another before both grew towards one another and decided to confess their love for each other. She disregarded the rumours surrounding him as she saw, up close, that he was nice person and allowed herself to get closer to him. It was also his very first time being in love, and he really enjoyed the feeling of there being a person that was worried for him.

During their time off from the university, they would go to places and took many photos of the nearby places they would visit together. They had a lovely time and they cared for each other greatly.

Serena had proved him about his bruises, and he confessed about the constant issues he faces at his current residency. Despite her urging him to relocate to another apartment and even report them, Zayden denied her as he explained how he met with the apartment owner and received no help from him.

“Apparently, they are like part of a big gang that own that entire are and the officials do their favours all the time for their services, so there’s no help I could get. On top of that, it’s the only cheap apartment with a single bedroom that suits my needs, Serena. There’s not much I can do.”

“Okay, but I want you to know that I care about you deeply and I’m worried for you, alright?”

“Yeah. Thank you, Serena.”

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With that, they hugged each other warmly, and he felt happy in warmth of that love. However, that was the beginning of the distance that gradually grew between them until, one day, she began to give different excuses to avoid being in his contact. Then, one day, feeling worried for her, he silently followed her and watched her wait at a bus stop for some time for unknown reasons.

Just then, a luxury car pulled up and the window rolled down to reveal a man around his age, and he grinned at her as he said, “Yo! Did I keep you waiting?”

“I just got here,” she lied, which shocked Zayden and that expression of love she showed him further shocked him.

“Great,” he said and the two leaned forward and kissed openly.

Zayden, watching this from afar, was horrified as the girl he thought he knew, the girl that he thought he understood, and the girl he believed was fully in love with him, was kissing another man. Then they pulled back and she blushed shyly before walked around and entering his car.

As they departed in the luxury car, Zayden felt to his knees just as the rain began pouring down from above. It was already murky all day and that was when it decided to rain down on them. Everyone quickly pulled out their umbrellas or used something to cover their heads, all except for Zayden.

He just knelt there with the same horrified expression as before, as he felt his world collapsing all around him. After an unknown amount of time, he got up and somehow managed to get to his apartment, reach his room, lock his door and fell on his bed. That was when the emotions that he had been trying to contain suddenly burnt forth, and he began crying his heart out all alone in that room.

Due to that, he fell asleep and missed his night shift from work, and the ancient looking phone that he had did failed to wake him up to the calls he was receiving from work. As such, the next morning when he checked the call log and was shocked, he called them immediately and heard the sobering words he dreaded to hear.

“You’re fired!”

It felt helpless and completely hopeless by everything that was happening to him. He could not even remember how he dressed himself and reached the university let alone pay any attention during the lectures that he attended. It was only after the university was over and he was on his way home when he saw Serena walking off with a happy smile.

Seeing her smile and her wetting her lips with her tongue made him remember the events from the previous day. Anger surged from within and he decided to confront her and that unknown man about it as he felt cheated in this whole affair.

That was how Zayden met up with her before they began arguing with one another as he confronted her about cheating on him. Soon after, the man showed up along with several of his men and scoffed at Zayden to leave them alone.

The deeply hurt youth grew angry at them and began calling them out on their ridiculous and disgusting behaviour. This caught the attention of the locals, who stopped and witnessed him unleash his emotions out in the public.

“You scumbags! How could you play with the feelings of an innocent man!” Zayden shouted tears forming in his eyes as he glared angrily at them.

The next second, he received a punch straight to the face that made him flying straight into a building.

“What a pain you are?” Markus complained irritably while rubbing his ears. Then he blew at the stuff he pulled out of his ear and told menacingly to his men, “Make sure to shut his mouth… permanently.”

On command, the men following Markus charged forward and began unleashing a barrage of beatings down on the cowering young man. However, the beatings he received from them was so powerful that he began to cry out in pain at every blow he received from them. This was nothing like the pain he had experienced from the constant beating he received from the goons that terrorised the apartment block on a weekly basis.

Despite the pain and feeling a sense of dread that he was about to die, he still looked towards Serena. Even though he felt betrayed and cheated on, he still had a slight hope that maybe, just maybe she has lingering feelings for him and would stop them.

She watched this beating unfold with a look of shock on her face unable to decide on what to do. At that moment, their eyes met and, for a second, things seemed to stay still as they locked eyes on one another. Then she looked away with a disturbed expression on her face and even closed her eyes as if to want to distance herself from this awful situation.

That was the moment Zayden felt his life was over. All the struggles he had been through, the double time he had put into his job to earn more money to take her to places and treat her to things and the love he had been reluctant to share with others. He felt everything had come to an end as despair had taken hold over him.

With such devastating thoughts, Zayden closed his eyes and lost consciousness just as everything turned dark.

Asura, who had suddenly recalled all the events that had happened in chronological order and felt very sorrow for such a strong-willed man. He finally understood the despair Zayden had felt before ultimately giving up everything.

“What’s the matter?” The man with the sinister smile called after him. “Cat got your tongue?”

Asura did not reply, but gave him a cold look as he thought to himself, “He’s the reason all of this happened.”

“Hey. What’s with that look?” The man asked, his smile fading and was replaced with a frown. “Actually, don’t answer that. I came to collect your rent’s money, which you missed yesterday. Give it to us now.”

Asura walked towards them silently and seemingly walked past them while saying, “I’ll pay later.”

At that moment, a hand was placed on his shoulder and stopped him from moving any further.

“What the hell, punk?” The man snarled menacingly. “I thought I’d be nice to you after hearing you broke up with your girly, but what’s this?”

Asura, without turning to face him, spoke in a menacing voice by saying, “Let go.”

There was a stunned silence within the entrance as the tenants, the goons and the man were taken aback by his words. The tenants were especially shocked and scared as they did not understand where he got his bravado from and fearfully looked at the rent collector.

The man began to let out a sinister chuckle before looking menacingly at him while saying, “I see. I guess being hospitalised and recovering made you forget the rules around here. I think we need a reintroduction.”

The moment he said those words, Asura’s blood boiled with rage and the memories of Zayden’s suffering resurfaced.

“Blood for blood, tooth for tooth, head for head,” he muttered, a reminder of the promise he made to Zayden’s memories as the people around him reacted in confusion.

In that instant, he decided to act like he always does; to make a point.

Asura grabbed the man’s hand with his left hand and, with a little bit of exerting his strength, he lifted the man off his feet. Everything seemed to flow in a slow motion as the man sored through the air while everyone watched with alarmed looks on their faces.

Then he was pulled down, which resulted in him slamming down hard on the floor, causing him to cry out in pain. There, he opened his eyes and looked up to see the once victim looking down on him with a deadly look on his face as he continued to hold his hand.

“Hey!” Shouted one of the goons and rushed at him.

The man gave his presence away from the shout and the rush, but Asura did not need any of these to be aware of his surroundings. Sensing him coming from behind and taking a large swing at him, Asura stepped to the side and allowed the man to swing his arms across where he was standing moments before.

As the goon reacted in surprise that he missed, Asura reacted by pulled his hand back and delivered a powerful slap across the goon’s face. The strong impact sent the largely built man flying off his feet and slamming heavily against the wall. A moment later, he slid down and sat limply on the ground, clearly knocked out from the blow.

“Ugh!” Shouted another goon and took a swing at Asura from behind once more.

Sensing the approaching attack, Asura swivelled and leaned back to let the attack fly harmlessly through the air. Then he set a foot down on the back to push himself forward and he swung his own hand forward to slap the attacker forcefully across the face.

Just like the first goon, this bulky man was lifted off his feet as he flew across the room and smashed into the wall. Then, all hell broke loose as the rest of the goons charged at him to perform an all-out attack on a single man.

Asura, for his part, reacted like he always does and began dodging each of their attack by swerving, or moving out of the way, side stepping, and sometimes stepping on the sprawled man, who cried out in pain as the youth continued to hold onto his hand. After dodging the attacks, Asura replied back with a might slap to each of the goon’s face, sending them flying and smashing into the wall in different areas.

Soon, the only one remaining standing was Asura while all goons were either sitting limply against the walls or lying down flat on their face, all knocked out from his slaps. The tenants of the apartment had these mouths agape, not believing what they were seeing.

“You bastard!” The man, lying at his feet, shouted furiously. “Once my men find out—!”

Before he could continue, Asura raised a leg and landed it heavily down on the man’s chest. The impact was so great that the ground cracked around them and it appeared like they sat a little into the ground. As for the man, he yelled out in immense pain and coughed blood out of his mouth.

“Shut up and listen!” Asura shouted fiercely with a deadly look on his face. “I’m not some pebble for you to play around! You understand? I’m not some road side pebble to play with!”

With that, he raised his leg and delivered yet another impact so hard that the ground sank even deeper around them. Once again, the man yelled out from the severe pain of the impact while coughing up blood from his mouth.

In the next moment, the atmosphere in the room thickened as Asura began to exert his energy threateningly. Everyone watched fearfully at such an aggressive demeanour as the tables were turned when the bully became the bullied.