Mara first noticed him on a Wednesday—the kind of gray day that felt like every other. The sky hung low and heavy, screens blinked on every corner, and the air carried the usual hum of exhaustion. The city looked the same, sounded the same, felt the same. Nothing ever changed anymore.
She was sitting on a cracked bench outside the building, sipping coffee that tasted like cardboard, when he sat down next to her. No phone in his hand. No earbuds. Just silence. That alone made him strange.
He looked about her age, maybe a little younger. He wore a jacket patched at the elbows and shoes scuffed to nothing. His eyes—bright, unguarded—didn't match the world around them. He was watching the sky like it still meant something.
Mara tried to ignore him. People didn't talk to strangers anymore; it wasn't safe, and besides, what was the point? But after a minute, he spoke.
"Do you ever notice," he said, "how everyone moves like they're late to something that doesn't exist?"
She blinked. "What?"
He turned to her, smiling—not the hollow kind people wear out of habit, but something real, almost defiant. "Look around," he said, gesturing to the stream of people passing by—heads down, screens up, faces blank. "They're rushing nowhere. Chasing shadows."
Mara frowned. "That's just how it is. Always has been."
"No," he said quietly. "It wasn't always like this. People used to look up. They used to see."
Something about the way he said it annoyed her. It sounded… hopeful. And hope was dangerous. Hope got you hurt. "You talk like it matters," she said. "Like it can change."
"Maybe it can," he said simply.
Mara scoffed. "You sound like one of those protest kids. The ones who think holding signs and yelling in empty streets will fix anything."
He smiled again. "Maybe it won't fix anything. But it means they still care. That's more than most."
She wanted to argue, to tell him the world didn't reward caring anymore, that people who kept their light on just burned out faster. But the words didn't come. Instead, she studied him—this strange boy with no screen, no fear, no filter. In a city of static, he was… unsettling.
"What's your name?" she asked finally.
"Eli," he said. "You?"
"Mara."
He nodded. "Nice to meet you, Mara-who-still-sees."
She almost laughed. "I don't 'see' anything. I just survive."
"That's what they want you to believe," he said, eyes still on the sky. "That surviving is enough. But surviving isn't living."
His words hung in the air like smoke, and for a moment, the city seemed quieter—like the noise had stepped back to listen.
She stood up, shaking her head. "You're strange, Eli."
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe I just haven't given up yet."
As she walked away, she felt something she hadn't felt in a long time—a flicker of irritation, yes, but beneath it… something else. Something dangerous.
A spark.
Because Eli didn't fit. He didn't bend. He didn't scroll or chant the daily script. He kept his light on in a world built on darkness.
And the worst part was, Mara realized she envied him for it.
That night, as she lay in bed, the glow of her phone screen lighting her face, she tried to lose herself in the feed—wars, fires, scandals, endless noise. But behind every headline, every distraction, his words whispered:
"Surviving isn't living."
And for the first time, she couldn't scroll them away.