Earth 2025
Ryan Ashworth had no direction in life, but he longed for one—a stable, happy life free from the constant weight of uncertainty. This was his final year of B. Tech, and placent season, lood like a storm on the horizon. He had been working hard, pouring his sleepless nights into the dream of securing a job at one of the world's biggest IT companies—Google, Samsung, Apple. It wasn't ambition. It was survival.
The alarm clock blared beside his bed, a sharp, rciless sound that cut through his sleep. He groggily opened his eyes and turned his head toward the glowing red digits. 8:00 AM. The morning light spilled in through the cracks in the curtains, washing over the cracked ceiling of his cramped, one-room apartnt. The silence in the room was deafening, the kind that reminded him of everything he had lost.
Three years ago, his parents had died in a car accident. In a heartbeat, his world had collapsed. Once, they were a comfortable upper-middle-class family with dreams and dinners and plans for the future. Now, there was nothing left but mories and a shadow of what could have been. His life had shrunk into this dim little apartnt, this suffocating solitude—except for one flicker of connection that had refused to die: Jane Blackwood.
Jane—his childhood friend. His constant. His contradiction.
She ca from a world he couldn't touch—wealth, prestige, legacy. The Blackwoods were the kind of family who didn't just own companies—they moved economies. And yet, sohow, Jane had always been there for him. When his world shattered, she held the pieces together. She comforted him, stayed by his side when no one else did. But she also never let him forget the truth.
"Only powerful people get to live on their own terms," she would say with cold certainty. "People like us? We live with what's given to us."
Ryan hated that. Hated how often she said it. Hated how much of it felt true. They had argued—again and again—but she never wavered. Neither did he. He wanted to believe that happiness wasn't reserved for the powerful. That people like him had a chance.
He also wanted her.
How could he not?
Jane was magnetic—tall, poised, commanding. Her raven-black hair frad a face that belonged on magazine covers. Grey eyes that seed to look through you, not at you. Thin eyebrows, a small, elegant nose, and lips like ripe cherries. She had the aura of a CEO, even when they were children playing in the park. But Ryan had never dared to act on his feelings.
He rembered his father's words the night before the accident—words that had haunted him ever since:
"Don't reach beyond your limits, son. That way lies suffering."
He hadn't understood it then. But after the accident, it beca all too clear. The world wasn't fair. It never had been. And he was powerless in it.
He brushed his teeth in silence, staring into the mirror. He was good-looking, objectively so. White hair like his mother's, blue eyes that still had so spark left in them. But looks didn't matter in a world like this. Not when the ga was rigged from the start.
It had been a month since he last talked to Jane. Their final conversation had ended in a heated argunt, and then... nothing. She vanished. The only thing he got was a text:
"Going overseas CEO training, No placents for ."
No explanation and goodbye, Just silence.
At college, Ryan took his usual seat in the lecture hall. Beside him sat Hazel Hargrove, the class topper. Like him, she ca from a modest background. Her mother had worked as a house cleaner to put her through school. When her mother passed away last year, Hazel had crumbled—but not completely. She was small, quiet, and wore glasses with a thin silver fra that always slid down her nose. She was beautiful in a way that wasn't loud.
Not only that, but she has White hair and had a very slender back with beautiful curves.
They'd done many projects together. Shared quiet study sessions, late-night assignnts, and eventually—feelings. He had confessed during their third-year sumr break, fumbling and awkward, expecting nothing.
But Hazel had smiled and said yes.
They never told anyone. They didn't have many friends to begin with, and they liked it that way—private, focused, simple only Jane had known, and Ryan never forgot the look on Jane's face when he told her. That smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. That silence that lasted a beat too long.
He had assud it was about her family—about the arranged marriage being planned for her with soone from another elite family. But now, he wasn't sure.
As the professor spoke, Ryan drifted. Hazel nudged him gently, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm fine," he whispered.
He wasn't.
He had called Jane. Texted her. Tried to et. Nothing. Just that one ssage. It didn't sit right. It felt... final. Cold. Like a door slamd shut without warning.
When class ended, Ryan and Hazel walked to the canteen, shared a quiet lunch, and talked about the future. Placents were in a week. Their lives were about to change.
And they did.
Both were selected by Google as software engineers. It felt surreal. Relief and fear twisted in his stomach as they packed their things and boarded a plane to New York.
MIT was behind them. A new life waited ahead.
They moved into a modest two-bedroom apartnt near their new office. $7,000 a month—a steep price. But with a combined monthly salary of $30,000, they could manage.
As Ryan unpacked his suitcase, he looked out the apartnt window at the towering skyline. The city buzzed with life, ambition, opportunity.
And yet, in all that noise, he felt a quiet hollowness inside.
Jane's absence wasn't just noticeable—it was painful. It echoed in every silent mont, every unanswered thought.
Why had she left so suddenly?
Why did her goodbye feel like a warning?
And most of all...
Was this truly the end of their story—or the beginning of sothing darker?
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