Due to the sunset, the streets were bathed in orange sunrays. On one of these same streets, a young man was walking toward his home.
Akhil moved through the streets, sticking to his usual habits.
On his way back, he helped a few beggars, shared his cookies with street dogs, and even assisted a few elderly women by carrying their shopping bags.
These actions caused him to be delayed in reaching his home.
"Today was really a tough day," Akhil said as he stretched his hand, feeling exhausted from all the heavy lifting and good deeds.
He was already thinking about taking a nap, as he always woke up exhausted.
Turning toward an empty road with a small tunnel through which his house was visible, Akhil moved toward it.
The shadow made the place slightly dimly lit. Thinking to check his notes one last time, he turned toward his bag.
Beeeepppp~
A sudden sharp sound from his watch, signifying an alarm, rang throughout the tunnel before reaching Akhil's ears, tangling his eardrums.
'!?!'
"AaaGggHh!—Thud!" Clenching his head, he lost his balance, throwing himself against the walls of the tunnel and colliding with its hard surface.
"Kughh!"
His brain felt like it was tearing in half, his eyeballs darted at a rapid pace, and the sheer intensity of pain filling his senses caused him to fall to the ground.
"AGHH....Control, Dhruv," he muttered through clenched teeth. For that mere moment, the pain slowly started to subside, but the veins visible on his head clearly showed the torment he had just endured.
"Haa....Haa....This shit is an hour later than expected," Dhruv gritted his teeth while gasping for breath, feeling the loss in his prediction.
Once again, his own personality caused him trouble.
Without delay, he opened his bag and took out a small pill carefully hidden inside the straps.
"Come on...," his trembling hands attempted to hold the pill before he swallowed it.
GULP
"Phew~" Lying there, slowly his brain calmed down due to the medicine taking effect. He rubbed his forehead with his hands, trying to regain control of himself.
'Why the hell did he delay so much in reaching home?' Dhruv couldn't understand the reason for his second personality's delay in reaching the destination when he had provided an extra hour for him to reach home on time.
Slowly standing from his place and brushing the dust off him, he moved out of the tunnel and toward a wooden house.
kriek~ kriek~
He stepped on the wooden stairs, each creaking step signifying their weak support, which could break at any time.
Though anyone else might have reached for the nearby railing for support, he refrained from doing so, due to the presence of a special substance he had spread across it.
Reaching his floor, he calmly observed his surroundings as he made his way to his room.
Upon arriving outside his door, he glanced outside to ensure no one was present, as his house was situated in a secluded alley.
Moving toward a nearby plant, he placed his left hand on its base, discreetly retrieving something from his palm before approaching the doorknob and opening it.
Slowly entering his room, which was not particularly spacious but contained a bookshelf, study table, and a mini kitchen, he proceeded without hesitation toward his study table.
'They seem to have erased even the smell,' he thought. Intentionally, he had sprayed a compound made of Vanillin and Acetic acid, creating a smell similar to books.
However, due to being artificially made, the scent should have lingered, but right now, he couldn't smell anything.
It was evident that whoever had entered his room had removed it while cleaning their traces.
'Handling two psychos at a time is really hard,' Dhruv muttered, as his right hand moved toward a pen stand on the table before clicking a small trigger hidden in its corner.
beep beep
A sound of an electronic device triggering reached his ears before a small red light blinked for a second, and within that moment, all the hidden cameras inside his room were network hacked, and their videos were spoofed into fake ones.
Already aware of the person who could plant cameras inside his room, he turned toward the bookshelf before using his thumb to click another small trigger.
whirrr~
Crumble
A machine's rolling mechanism sound was audible inside the room before the whole bookshelf started to move, revealing a small path leading downwards via a small stair.
The door and window were already sealed the moment the bookshelf revealed that hidden passage, not allowing anyone to break in until the path was sealed—a mechanism made with keen understanding.
Dhruv moved inside it, slowly arriving at the bottom of the basement where his eyes settled on several computer screens, a big mirror, a cloth drawer, and sections containing electronic gadgets and chemicals.
The room was far more spacious than the one above.
Everything needed for daily life was already present in this place, and at the center existed a huge whiteboard filled with newspaper cutouts, advertisements of Rajashekhar Corporations, several location markings on maps, and detailed analysis drawn with red marker pens.
There were images belonging to Rajashekhar Hans, the world's richest business tycoon, with his two daughters—one who was the legitimate heir, Niharika Rajashekhar, and the other who was illegitimate, Laila Rajashekhar.
Both daughters reigned supreme in their own fields, one rivaling her own father in business and the other ruling the hearts of billions of people.
It was natural that to make someone like them fall in love, he needed to go as far as to suppress his own mind and create a double personality for himself—a naive, innocent, and kind personality.
After all, no matter how good one is at acting, when under the surveillance of twenty-four hours, there are definitely openings where the chances of being caught could lead to all his plans failing.
So, he made himself one with his new self by suppressing his memory of the night when he lost everything and the meaning of his life, making his only goal revenge.
Dhruv slowly moved toward a counter filled with chemicals and a microscope before tearing off a layer of skin from his left hand, which he had stuck from the plant before entering his room.
Placing it on the table, the color of that layer was now purple, with fingerprints visible on it; it was ninhydrin, specially used for fingerprint detection.
Placing it inside the small machine on the table, which was based on an Automated Fingerprint Identification System, he ran the program, leaving it to match with the database he had collected throughout all this time.
Moving toward the big mirror, his own reflection stared back at him.
Slowly lifting his hand, he removed his t-shirt, revealing six-pack abs and a well-built physique, yet something felt amiss.
Slowly moving toward his chest, he peeled off a fake layer of skin, revealing a big burn mark and a small knife cut on his shoulder, which had become deep marks over time.
Placing his hand on the mirror, Dhruv's mind reflected memories of all the screams and suffering of his beloved ones, always making him realize how weak he is.
Turning toward the whiteboard at the center of this place, while approaching it, he recalled everything. "Eight years of my life, a broken mind and a broken soul, this is what you gave me, Mr. Rajashekhar."
He lifted two darts before throwing them toward it.
Thwack Thwack
The darts hit the foreheads of two young women's images standing beside a middle-aged man known as the richest man.
"You both don't know how hard it was for me to make you fall for me this hard."