{ 4:00 PM | Avi's Home | Slums, Zone Y }
Vikram stood outside Avi's house carrying a parcel in his right hand. He had nowhere else to go and it felt weird to enter Avi's life like this. He had been staring at the thatch structure for quite a while now.
'It should be called a beggar's shack rather than a house'
The walls that seemed like they had been created to only last a year were long past their due date. The holes in them had mousetraps that could be seen from the street.
A wet canal ran directly outside the house and the whole street was littered with drunk men rolling in their own piss.
Every breath Vikram took felt like he had swallowed smoke and a crowd of lifeless bodies moved about the street smelling like filth.
"This is my house?", he comparing the shack with the Villa he used to live in. The irony, however, was that he couldn't say which was worse.
With the memories of a convoluted childhood where he ate grass to avoid being poisoned and slept holding a knife, he pushed ajar the wobbly thatch door.
Inside, he noticed a 12-year-old girl sitting in one corner of the room writing in an old notebook.
Her sleepy and skeleton-y face was too absorbed in the book to notice his presence right away.
He gave a careful look at the girl. She looked like one of the beggar-children, who would sell flowers to randome people in a busy street.
He knew that Maya wasn't his cunning and mischievous sister, but his heart still trembled slightly at her ghastly appearance.
In his heart, there was anger that Maya had taken his sister's place, but he knew better that it was the other way around. It was him who didn't belong there.
Standing still at the door, he scanned the house that ended as soon as he stepped in. It was smaller than how it looked from the outside.
'How filthy?', were his first thought when he looked at damp thatch walls.
The 300 sq feet shack was divided into two portions, a slightly larger portion was where Maya was sitting.
Other than the girl, the room had one worn-out mattress resting on the wall with its filling leaking out, and a bucket in the center collecting water from the leaking roof.
The other, even smaller portion, looked like a kitchen and had cardboard boxes with dried vegetables in them.
"Bhaiya, Welcome! You are... *cough*... home *cough*"
A wide smile appeared on Maya's malnourished face.
As if it hurt her to even smile, the ark on her face turned into a painful somber right away, however, she still forced her lips to maintain a slight upward arc.
Vikram couldn't help but get overwhelmed by immense sorrow and pain. His chest suddenly burnt like someone had poured hot wax on him.
But before he could analyse why his body behaved strangely, the girl came running and hugged him.
She barely reached his chin and he felt her raw bones stab his body like nails.
'Just how weak is she?', a almost instinctive analysis appeared in his mind.
He took hold of her by the shoulders and gently pushed her away fearing that he might break her accidentally, especially since he was an awakened super human now.
He couldn't believe how someone could be so weak? Her shoulders barely had muscles and right below the collar bone, he could see the outline of her ribs protruding out of her paper thin skin.
"Bhaiya, sit down, I'll get you some water", she said and quickly ran to the kitchen and lit a fire under the stove with grasses and sticks.
Vikram's heart was feeling pain again, however, his mind felt absolute indifference at her condition. It was a paradox that Vikram couldn't understand.
*cough... cough*
As he took a few steps, his eyes fell on a broken wooden chest on the side.
He curiously looked inside and found a couple of rags, a large brown sack, a couple of old notebooks, and a single family photo of four.
There was practically nothing else in their house; it didn't take a genius to realise that the whole wealth of the Dovici family didn't amount to more than half a kg of scrap.
'How poor are they-?'
"Bhaiya! here", she brought lukewarm water and served him with an angelic smile, "... I'll quickly cook food, please wait a little."
"Maya, wait...", unintentionally the words leaked out of his mouth. This was a similar episode like the one he had at the Infirmary.
Since he was in a new body, Vikram failed to micro-manage his body. After all, it had only been less than 48 hours since his transmigration.
"Huh-? Yes, bhaiya, do you need something?", she said innocently; urging her brother to hurry.
~firewood is about finished~, she muttered in a low voice embarrassingly, but Vikram heard it loud and clear.
Maybe, before his awakening, he would have missed the mumblings, but right now his senses worked extremely well.
And just like that, he felt the land being snatched away from under his foot when he realised the actual implications of her word.
Suddenly, Vikram was at a loss for words. He stared at Maya and was totally flabbergasted by her priorities.
A few feet apart, Maya's body was shaking from cold, and yet she stood straight like a pillar trying to hide the pain as if nothing was happening to her.
There were blue rashes around her throat that extended till her back, but still, she hadn't lit the campfire because she wanted to save measly pennies on firewood.
Her stomach growled so loud that even Vikram could feel the pain of that hungry stomach from the distance.
And yet, all she had done so far is serve Vikram since he entered the shack.
'Seriously-!!', he thought while scratching his head. To Vikram, stealing, or even ending up in a Jail was better than living like this.
"Come, sit first. You don't need to cook anything tonight"
Although he didn't care to reciprocate Maya's feeling, it wasn't a big deal for him to treat her to a dinner once in a while if he felt like doing charity.
Maya looked at her brother with a questionable gaze, "What do you mean?"
"I have brought meat from the main street.", he said nonchalantly, something he thought wasn't a big deal.
.
.
.
*SILENCE*
.
.
.
"BROTHER-!!! *cough*... *cough*...", her shout broke the spell cast by the deafening silence.
The pain from coughing was too much for her weak body and yet she only got angrier by the seconds.
Vikram was caught off guard by her overreaction. Startled by her unending streams of cough, he unconsciously ran behind her to avoid being coughed at.
While there, he rubbed her back to help her breathe, but was pushed away by her sickly hands instead.
"Why would you do that?", she shouted, "...brother, I told you that we can eat vegetables, right-??... *cough*"
"... I told you, not to bring meat home again-!!"
*cough*
"but...", Vikram paused to think, "...meat is good-!?"
He said something unnecessary.
*gasp... woah*
A thought entered his mind, '... are they perhaps vegetarians?'
He believed that he had cracked the mystery of her overreaction. Wasn't killing animals a sin for hardcore vegetarians?
But the look in Maya's eyes only became fierce, "Do you think I don't know that?"
She looked at Vikram with both contempt and sadness.
*drip*
Tears started flowing down her cheeks as she started hitting her brother's chest with her weak hands.
*cough*
"You... You... I told you not to waste money", her crying shouts echoed the 300 sq foot shack.
Even the people in the street had their ears perked up at the hints of a drama happening.
*cough*
"... You need every single coin to prepare for your exam, Why would you waste it like that!! WHY!!!"
*cough... cough*
"... WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!!"
*cough... cough... cough*
"... I AM ALWAYS HOLDING YOU BACK, AREN'T I-??? ... waah... waah"
*cough... cough*
"... JUST LEAVE ME LIKE OUR PARENTS AND GO!!!... waah... waah WHY! WHY! WHY DON'T YOU LEAVE ME-!!! "
Her crying words were a reflection of the insecurities that the 12-year-old carried.
She had thought hard about what her existence meant to the brother who was working day and night like ants to put food on the table.
A 12-year-old girl had spent the last couple of days contemplating whether she even had any purpose in life, or should she even be alive?
From the first day of her life, she had been nothing but a burden to everyone around her.
First, she ate her parents, and now her brother was overworking himself to death because of her.
What sister in the world would be happy to be a curse on her family?
Her cries became louder as her beating hand slowed down.
She didn't have the strength to even lift her hands anymore, every muscle in her arm and throat was killing her.
Vikram looked at Maya's outcry and remained speechless.
For some reason, even a heartless criminal like him felt his heart swayed by her pain.
He wasn't clear whether it was due to his transmigration or because he was an old man now, but something heavy was pushing his heart.
It was a strange feeling that didn't make sense to him. He had never protected or cared for anyone except his step-sister, so he couldn't really understand.
It took a while, but finally it dawned on him as to why Maya was angry. His rational mind had concocted a theory based on the little clues he had.
He was ignorant about the Dovici's situation and had insensibly flaunted his newfound wealth in front of a 12-year-old suicidal child without a penny to her name.
On cold chilly winter nights of December, this 12-year-old girl had stayed home hungry and without even lighting a fire just so she could save pennies on firewood.
'So dumb!', Vikram cursed in his heart, but not his behaviour.
Although he knew why she did it, his logical mind couldn't appreciate dumbry.
He felt a mountain of pain in his heart looking at her weak state, but his mind was untethered to such idiosyncrasies.
"I... I... am... sorry...?", he didn't know why but the words just came out of his mouth. It was as if Vikram was two person at the same time.
*drip*
A tear formed under his left eye and rolled down his cheeks.
He suddenly had no control over his left eye that was shedding tears, whereas his right eye was dry like a dessert.
Vikram suddenly felt caged in his own body. The sight of half his body behaving completely opposite to his other half seemed impossible, but it was happening.
Although he read such things in the novel he often enjoyed, they were still, in the end, just stories till he was on the spot.
The kind of love and care he had seen in Maya's cries in one minute was more than he had received in his whole life.
Even though he knew that Maya didn't love 'him', he could still feel warm even if it was just an illusion he was having due to weird story-like circumstances.
The only person to have "loved" him was his step-sister, but even she wouldn't have cried like Maya; their relationship, after all, was more transactional than emotional.
"Listen, I received a huge sum of money today. I didn't waste my savings, I even have more than what I needed for the Shika exam-!!", he hurriedly said in a flat tone.
His words lacked emotions. It was as if he was reading a recited line.
"... I'm sorry, I should have explained it to you first", he panicked to say the appropriate words and somehow jumbled together the lines he had read in novels.
Maya looked at Vikram with judgmental eyes, it was as if they were asking, "Who would give you money? Do you think I'm an idiot?"
However, she refrained from voicing her thoughts out. She gulped her complaints with the pain.
She knew that even if he was lying, he was doing it for her sake and that she couldn't do anything about it. She was after all a self sacrificing girl when it came to her brother's happiness.
The awkward and emotionless Vikram couldn't have been any more diametrically opposed to Maya's self sacrificial love, however, both of them still found a way to coexist in that shack.
As Maya calmed down and Vikram made her accept a bowl of chicken curry, he felt the weight of guilt on his sentience fade just a little
'Don't worry girl, you'll not go hungry again. I promise you that at least', he said in his heart looking at the sickly girl licking the leftover soup in her bowl as if it was the last meal of her life.
His promise was more transactional than emotional.
It was as if he wanted to somehow justify taking over Avi's life by providing for Maya.