Chapter 1:- The End
Part 1: Market Errand
The afternoon sun pressed down like a warm hand over the neighborhood. Shadows stretched long and thin, and the narrow lanes leading to the market seemed to shimmer with the heat. Even so, the market itself was alive as always—colors, voices, and smells blending into a single, familiar chaos.
Veer slipped into the flow of people, weaving between women balancing bags of vegetables, children tugging at their mothers’ hands, and shopkeepers calling out offers that overlapped one another. He held his phone close to his ear, his other hand steadying the strap of his college bag.
“Hey, Maa… they have cabbage here. Two kilos for fifty rupees, and another shop is selling it for thirty per kilo. Should I take this one?” Veer asked, his tone casual yet careful, the way he always spoke when it came to bargaining.
On the other end, his mother’s calm but decisive voice came through the speaker.
“If they’re giving two kilos for fifty, then take it. What about the other vegetables?”
Veer shifted slightly to the side of the road to avoid a scooter squeezing through. His eyes swept over the stalls lined neatly, each one bursting with a different color—golden heaps of potatoes, shiny green brinjals, the red glow of ripe tomatoes, and a basket of soybeans still dusted with soil.
“They’ve got potatoes, twenty a kilo… or five kilos for a hundred. A little cheaper if I take more,” he said, raising his voice a notch above the surrounding noise. “Tomatoes, brinjal, soybeans… all fresh.”
“Then take them all,” his mother instructed. Her voice sharpened slightly, the way it always did when she was already planning dinner in her head.
“And come home quickly. Your father will be back soon. I need to cook before that.”
Veer nodded instinctively, though she couldn’t see it. “Okay, Mom.”
He moved from stall to stall, picking out vegetables, pressing gently at the tomatoes to test their firmness, and letting the vendor shovel potatoes into his bag. The bargaining was routine now, like a small performance he had learned from watching his parents over the years. He bought everything, packed it into the extra carry bags he had folded neatly in his pocket—because his college bag was already stuffed with notebooks and wouldn’t survive a load of vegetables—and slung them carefully across his shoulders.
As he stepped out of the market and onto the quieter street, the soundscape shifted. The shouts of vendors faded into a more scattered hum, replaced by the distant clatter of rickshaws and the occasional bark of a street dog. Veer pushed his earphones in, thumb hovering for only a moment before pressing play.
A familiar piano note spilled into his ears. Sparkle—one of those Japanese songs from a movie he had watched more times than he would ever admit. No matter how often it played, it always caught him.
His steps slowed just a little, his head lowering as if the world outside had dimmed. The rhythm of his walk synced with the beat, his grip on the bags loosening slightly as the melody lifted him away from the weight on his shoulders.
“Hah… this song is like magic,” he whispered in some lines.
Mada kono sekai wa
Boku wo kainarashitetai mitai da
Nozomi doori darou?
Utsukushiku mogaku yo
Tagai no sunadokei
Nagame nagara kisu wo shiyou yo
"Sayonara" kara ichiban tooi
Basho de machiawaseyou
With a half-smile tugging at his lips. The sun above was still merciless, but for a moment, with the tune filling his ears, it felt distant—like it belonged to some other world entirely.
________
Part 2: The Accident
Veer walked for a few minutes, the weight of the bags tugging at his arms, until he reached the corner where the road split into four directions. Normally it was just another turn, but today the crossroad felt strangely clogged. A small crowd had gathered, people shuffling impatiently, craning their necks to see what was holding things up.
As he adjusted his earphones, Veer’s ears caught a familiar tone of laughter. Just ahead, leaning against a wall, were two boys wearing the same college IDs as his own. Their voices carried easily through the air. They hadn’t noticed him yet.
“Hey, buddy, you know that skinny short guy from our college?” one of them said with a smirk.
The other chuckled. “Yeah, I heard about him. That guy who looks kinda like a girl. Dark skin, not good-looking either.”
His friend laughed louder. “Oh yeah! I heard he’s gay or something. And he’s supposed to be our upper classman in second year? What a joke.”
“And he’s not even five-foot-eight.”
Both of them burst into another round of laughter, nudging each other as if they had just told the funniest story of the day.
Veer’s fingers tightened around the straps of his bags until his knuckles whitened. His jaw clenched. The words stung—not because he hadn’t heard them before, but because every repetition carved the wound deeper. He wanted to step forward, to say something, anything. But he didn’t. He only lowered his gaze, checked the traffic, and stepped off the curb.
And then—
It came.
A roar of an engine, higher and harsher than normal. A truck. It shot into view from the opposite road, swerving violently as though some invisible hand had wrenched the wheel. Its horn blared, but there was no one holding it. Through the windshield, Veer saw it—no driver.
The crowd erupted instantly. People shouted, their voices jagged with panic.
“Move!” someone screamed.
“Boy! Get out of the way!” another yelled, arms waving desperately.
“Do you have a death wish?”
But Veer… couldn’t.
His feet rooted themselves to the asphalt. His body trembled, yet refused to listen. Every signal from his brain slammed into a wall inside him. He tried to step back, but his legs felt like stone.
“What the hell…?” His voice was barely a whisper, his breath lodged halfway in his throat.
The truck bore down on him like a skeleton monster, its headlights burning like hollow eyes, its front grille stretched into a ghastly grin. To Veer, it wasn’t a vehicle anymore. It was a reaper swinging its scythe.
His chest is constricted. His heartbeat thundered, but his arms, his legs—nothing moved. His vision blurred at the edges.
Tears welled in his eyes, not out of fear, but from something heavier—resignation.
“…So this is it,” the thought formed quietly, almost gently.
And in that frozen moment, his mind whispered:
> Death isn’t some monster to defeat. It’s the one truth no one escapes.
Life forces us forward, step after step, even when the road leads nowhere.
And for what? To pretend? To wear hope like a mask when inside, everything’s already broken?
Anime, movies, all those fantasies… they were never real answers. Just distractions, A little light to hide the cracks—pain, suffering, loneliness, depression. They made us believe in miracles, in second chances. But reality… reality never forgives. It never rewinds.
Death isn’t a failure It isn’t a loss It’s silent Cold, empty silence And maybe… that silence finally won’t hurt.
The world narrowed to a single instant.
And then—
BOOM!
Metal and bone collided. The truck slammed into him with a merciless force. Agony ripped through his body—his leg bones shattering like fragile glass, his ribs cracking under the pressure, his breath stolen as blood filled his throat in hot, choking waves.
The ground rushed up to meet him. Above, the sky blurred into a smear of pale blue and white.
For one fleeting second, he thought he could hear Sparkle,
still His cracked phone screen is still glowing Sparkle playing faintly in his earphones.
To be continued.....
