Adyanth had been discharged. No parade, no paperwork—just a nurse mumbling something about signatures and a pen that didn't work.
Yurrel? Vanished.
No last insult. No cryptic warning. Not even a goodbye rant about trauma in post-capitalist institutions.
The man had simply ceased to exist, like a fever dream wrapped in a lab coat.
Adyanth wasn't too bothered.
Honestly? He was relieved.
If he never saw that morally questionable science goblin again, it would be too soon.
"He probably abducts patients to dissect them on weekends," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "He is creepy."
With that comforting thought, he made his way toward the loading yard.
It was buzzing—literally. The air stank of diesel and shouted profanities as truckers argued with overworked logistics men about weights, manifests, and who owed whom a bottle of gut-rotting whiskey.
He weaved through the chaos until he reached a rust-scarred delivery truck.
It was the one someone had mumbled was "his ride"—not so much allocated as ignored until it couldn't be anymore.
He looked at the crates stacked inside.
Marked with dusty stencils: Medical, Rations, Textiles.
"Well. I guess I am cargo," he muttered. "At least they didn't bubble-wrap me."
He gave a smile—practiced, hollow—and he decided to keep trying those. Maybe if he smiled long enough, his brain would take the hint and install the missing joy patch.
Climbing up to the cabin, he tapped on the passenger window.
"Hey. I'm Adyanth. I was told to hitch a ride back to the orphanage?"
The man behind the wheel looked like he'd lost a wrestling match with his uniform.
Rugged khaki clothes, tan skin darker than the dust, and a cigar clenched between his fingers like it owed him rent. The thing was down to its dying breath, but clearly too sacred to extinguish.
The driver looked at him sideways. His eyes went briefly wide.
"Oh. You're that kid," he said, as if spotting an endangered species. "Huh. Thought you wouldn't make it. Shows what I know."
He said it with the same tone people used when admitting it probably wasn't going to rain today.
Adyanth expected that by now.
Still, a small part of him curled inward.
No one worried.
Not the nurses. Not Yurrel. Not even this stranger with a death-wish cigar.
Of course no one worried.
Still, it stung. And like all things that stung, it circled back to the space his parents used to fill.
The guilt bubbled—briefly. But this time, it passed.
He had a reason now. A goal.
He wasn't going to let mourning become a performance he couldn't access.
He'd earn it.
Eventually.
The driver cleared his throat.
"You gonna stand there all day, or...?"
"Oh. Right."
Adyanth shook himself back to the present.
The man jabbed a thumb toward the rear of the truck.
"Hop in the back. It's a six-hour drive."
That made Adyanth blink.
"Six hours? Seriously?"
The driver shrugged.
"Wouldn't be, but roads are garbage. Some parts got cratered last month. We've gotta zigzag around holes big enough to eat your soul."
He said it like he'd personally lost three hubcaps and his will to live.
Adyanth briefly wondered if that passive aggression was for the roads or for having to transport him.
Hard to say. It's easier not to ask.
Instead, he climbed into the back without a word.
Inside, the truck smelled like plastic tarp, old jute, and whatever mystery adhesive the government used to bind regret into crates.
He picked a corner. Slid between two carts tied off to the walls with rope. He sat and exhaled.
And then it came back.
Yurrel's voice. That smug, Clinical, and Disturbingly amused.
"You shouldn't have survived. Your heart's beating just enough to keep you alive."
Adyanth closed his eyes.
He remembered the fever. The bruises.
The shallow breaths that scraped his throat like broken glass.
"I shouldn't have made it," he whispered, not to anyone.
Then: "But yay, I did."
He laughed—dry and crooked.
"Real bargain, that one."
He leaned back, letting the hum of the engine fill the hollow parts. The truck began to roll forward, jittering over loose gravel and bad decisions.
Seems I only survived to suffer a little longer.
---
His thoughts, as they often did lately, circled back to the diagnosis. Especially to that tone. That uncaring, sarcastic and smugly clinical tone.
It still made his jaw twitch.
The way Yurrel had treated his misery like a crossword puzzle with bonus points for irony— it boiled his blood in places he didn't even know had circulation.
He'd wanted to punch that stupid, angular, caffeine-soaked face.
But he hadn't.
Because every time Yurrel looked at him, it was like being X-rayed by a man who didn't see a person—just a meat bag with legs and symptoms. A very interesting meat bag, mind you, but not much more.
The chill that crawled up Adyanth's spine at the memory was almost impressive.
Like his nerve endings were trying to file a complaint.
Still, he shoved it aside and refocused on the one line that wouldn't leave him alone:
"The universe let you survive only to take away your reason for living."
At the time, it had felt like one of those edgy quips people toss around when they've read too much Nietzsche and not enough parenting manuals.
But after the tests?
He got it.
Oh, he got it loud and clear.
---
First came the food.
Real meat. Actual dessert.
Easily the best meal he'd ever had—the kind of thing poor kids imagine in fever dreams and propaganda posters.
He chewed. He swallowed. He acknowledged it tasted incredible.
And he felt… absolutely nothing.
No spark.
No joy.
No warmth blooming in his chest like in the movies.
Just texture.
Temperature.
A vague sense of betrayal.
Then came the comedy flicks. Hand-picked. Test audience-approved.
He watched an actor slip on a banana peel and land in a punch bowl.
He knew it was funny.
But the laugh never arrived.
It got lost somewhere between logic and feeling, like a courier who took the wrong interstate and never came back.
By the end of the week, the pattern was clear.
He could register stimuli. He just couldn't feel the rewards.
No joy.
No calm.
No peace.
Only guilt.
Rage.
Hatred.
Grief-shaped shadows with nowhere to go.
Apparently, those were still on the menu.
It was like the emotional buffet had closed for maintenance—
but someone left the dumpster unlocked out back.
---
The realization hit him with all the grace of a broken elevator.
This is it, he thought bitterly. This is what I get to live with. Suffering as a lifestyle. Pain on repeat until I drop dead or do it myself.
He felt his breath stutter, chest tightening with that peculiar breed of dread usually reserved for infinite math exams or existential cliff dives.
There was no home left.
No safe space.
And even if there were?
He wouldn't be able to feel it.
The helplessness coiled like a snake under his ribs.
But then—something shifted.
Not a miracle.
Not clarity.
Just... defiance.
"If I can't feel anything good," he whispered,
"then why should I feel anything bad?"
It made no logical sense.
But it was the first thought that didn't feel like drowning.
"If the universe let me live just to suffer,
then screw that. I refuse."
---
Yurrel's face floated back into his mind. That smug, sarcastic, lab-goblin face.
Would he care what anyone thought?
Would he cry because someone looked at him funny?
Hell no.
He'd insult your haircut and diagnose your trauma before you finished the sentence.
Maybe I should be like that, Adyanth thought.
Just stop caring. Stop giving anyone that power.
He paused.
Then immediately shook his head.
"Nope. I'd die alone in a week.
Probably choked on a sarcastic retort."
"So… what then?"
He let the question hang.
And slowly, quietly, the answer came:
"I'll treat people like background characters.
Static noise in my personal broadcast. But I won't mute myself either."
He would smile when needed.
Nod where appropriate.
Say the right things at the right volume.
He would act like everything was normal—
even if it wasn't.
He'd perform politeness.
Project likability.
"Like Dad used to do", he realized.
Only without the kindness.
That part? He didn't have the bandwidth for.
His eyes narrowed with a kind of tired resolve—the kind made of cracked teeth and stitched pride.
As the truck bounced and rattled down the half-collapsed road, he stared out at the horizon and whispered to himself:
"From now on... I only feel what I want to feel. That's all they get."
The rest? Noise.
Just like the world wanted.
And maybe—just maybe—he could weaponize that silence into something sharp.