He lived alone. Not the peaceful kind of alone. The kind that feels like a room where the air has been sucked out.
Every morning, he went to work. Every evening, he came back. Same steps, same train, same door. His life moved like a clock that kept ticking but forgot why it was built.
At the office, he kept his head down. Eyes on the floor, hands on the work. He didn’t look left or right. Not because he was arrogant. But because looking at happy people felt like touching a fresh burn.
If someone asked for help, he helped. He did it fast, like passing a glass of water through a narrow gap in a prison wall. No smile, no talk, no warmth. The help reached them, but he didn’t.
Some people hated that. They watched him like a puzzle they couldn’t solve. Quiet, low-paid, never complaining. Yet, he saved money. He saved like a man building a fortress. Slowly, his savings grew bigger than theirs.
Their eyes changed. Their smiles became thin. Jealousy is a nasty, small fire. It doesn’t give light. It only makes smoke.
They whispered. They called him a miser. They didn’t know his wallet was full only because his house was empty. He had no one to buy a birthday gift for. His savings were just a pile of paper, a monument to his loneliness.
One day, the whispers turned into a confrontation. They cornered him. “What are you hiding? Why do you act like you’re better than us?”
He looked at them. For a moment, the office walls disappeared. He wasn’t standing on a carpet anymore. He was back there. On that street.
The memory hit him, sharp and clear.
It was a winter evening. He was waiting on the other side of the road. He saw them. His wife, holding their daughter’s hand. They saw him and smiled. The warmth of their reunion lit up her face. She stepped off the curb, running toward him, eager to close the distance.
But fate had other plans.

A car, driven by a man drunk on folly and alcohol, swerved out of the dark.
It happened in a heartbeat, but in his mind, it played in slow motion. The screech of tires. The thud. The silence.
He ran to them. His daughter was gone instantly—her life extinguished like a candle in a storm. But his wife was still there, lying on the cold asphalt.
She couldn’t speak. She was alone and vulnerable on the hard ground. Just before she closed her eyes, a single tear slipped down her cheek. It was a silent testament to her heart’s longing. The anguish in her eyes spoke volumes. It was a look of pure despair, a look that gripped his heart and never let go.
As he slipped into the darkness of shock, that was the last image imprinted on his soul: her face, that single tear, and the goodbye she never got to say.
Back in the office, he blinked, and the memory faded. He looked at his jealous coworkers.
“You ask me why I am quiet,” he said softly.
He thought about the chain of life that was cut that night. If his daughter had lived, she would have grown up. She would have fallen in love. She would have embraced motherhood. She would have made him a grandfather.
But that precious chain was severed by a stranger’s reckless act. The line ended with him. There would be no future generations. Just an irreplaceable void.
“I am quiet,” he told them, his voice trembling, “because I am listening to a silence you will hopefully never hear.”
He walked out.
That night, he sat on his bed. The wall played the movie again. The tear. The cold asphalt. The lost future.
He picked up his phone. His thumb shook. He typed three words to an old friend.
I’m not okay.
He sent the truth, small and naked. And for the first time since the asphalt drank that single tear, he finally breathed.