The bus dropped Teya three blocks from home. She walked the rest of the way through rain that had softened to a miserable drizzle, her ruined shoes leaving wet footprints on the cracked pavement. The neighborhood changed with every block—fewer streetlights, more potholes, buildings that leaned toward each other like tired old men. 🌂
Their apartment was on the third floor of a building that had seen better decades. The stairs creaked beneath her feet. The hallway smelled of cooking oil and damp laundry. And when she pushed open the door, she stepped into a world that couldn't have been further from the marble halls of Aethelgard's elite.
The living room was small but immaculate. A second-hand sofa covered with a colorful throw. A television from ten years ago perched on a wooden stand. Photos on the walls; a smiling man with kind eyes, a younger version of her mother, children with gap-toothed grins. Her papa. Gone five years now. 🗯
From the bedroom, she heard coughing. Deep, wracking coughs that shook the thin walls.
Teya dropped her bag and rushed inside.
Her mother lay on the edge of the bed, one hand pressed to her chest, the other holding a cloth stained with something Teya tried not to see. Her face was pale, almost gray, and when she looked up at her daughter, she tried to smile. She always tried to smile.
"Teya, you're soaked! Go change before you catch cold."
"Mom, you should be lying down." Teya crossed the room in three steps, kneeling beside her mother. "Did you take your medicine?"
"In the morning. I'll take the next dose at night." Another cough shook her. "Save them. They're expensive."
Teya's jaw tightened. She helped her mother lie back against the pillows, pulling the thin blanket up to her chin. Expensive. Everything was expensive. The tuberculosis medication, the rent, the school fees for the little ones, the exam registration for her brother.
She walked back to the main room and stood in the doorway, looking at her siblings.
Her brother, Kavi, was at the small dining table, textbooks spread before him, his brow furrowed over a math problem. He was seventeen, months away from his final exams, and he should have been focused only on his future. Instead, Teya knew he spent his nights searching for part-time jobs online, planning to drop out and work.
Her two little sisters, Anu and Mali, were already asleep on a mattress in the corner, curled together like puppies. Their school uniforms hung on a line by the window, washed and ready for tomorrow. Anu was ten, with her papa's thoughtful eyes. Mali was eight, still clutching a worn stuffed rabbit that had once been Teya's. They were too young to understand why there wasn't always enough food, why Mom coughed all night, why Big Sis came home with wet clothes and empty eyes.
Teya sat at the small desk by the window. On it lay her university degree—Bachelor's in Human Resources Management, graduating with honors. The paper gleamed in the dim light, a testament to years of sacrifice. Her mother's sacrifice. Long days cleaning other people's houses. Skipping meals so her children could eat. Never buying new clothes, never complaining.
And now this degree, this shield she had fought so hard to earn, felt like a stone around her neck. It couldn't buy medicine. It couldn't pay this month's rent. It couldn't stop the eviction notice that sat in the drawer with the unpaid bills.
Teya opened that drawer now. She pulled out the papers—the medical prescriptions, the loan documents from her papa's funeral, the letters from the bank. She spread them before her like a map of her failures.
Dear Ms. Teya Villes, we regret to inform you...
This is a reminder that your payment is now overdue...
Final notice before legal action...
Her eyes burned, but she refused to cry. She had cried enough on that street, in front of that car, for that cold, indifferent man who looked through her like she was air.
To him, I was nothing, she thought. Less than nothing. A puddle to splash through.
She thought of his face, the sharp jaw, the perfect suit, the utter lack of concern. She thought of his voice, ice wrapped in silk: "I don't have time to waste on pointless arguments."
Her hands curled into fists.
Tomorrow, she had an appointment at Sterling-Morrow Group. It was the biggest corporation in the city, the kind of place that didn't usually consider girls from neighborhoods with cracked pavement. But she had applied online, somehow gotten through the initial screening, and they had called her for an interview.
She didn't know much about the company's owners. Just that they were old money, generations of wealth, the kind of family that lived on the hill and never looked down.
Tomorrow, she would walk into that building with her head high. She would smile. She would convince them to give her a chance. She would take any job- receptionist, assistant, coffee girl, and she would work until her fingers bled.
Because behind her, her mother coughed in her sleep.
Behind her, her brother dreamed of dropping out.
Behind her, her sisters, ages ten and eight, didn't know that soon, they might not have a home.
Teya folded the papers and put them away. She looked at her reflection in the dark window, a young woman with tired eyes and wet hair, wearing a ruined dress, carrying the weight of five lives on her shoulders.
Tomorrow, she would walk into Sterling-Morrow.
Tomorrow, she would fight.
She didn't know that Sterling-Morrow was owned by the family of the man who had splashed her on the street. She didn't know that the CEO, the heir to that empire, sat in his office right now, staring at the rain, thinking about nothing and no one.
She didn't know that his name was Aryan Samuel, and their paths would cross again.
But the universe knew. And it was already laughing. 😅