Eternal Malediction (RE)

Chapter 98: Chapter 60: A Mirage of Miracles

Roy decided he didn’t want to be in his room.

The decision came quietly, without drama or urgency. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, jacket still on, shoes kicked off but not put away, staring at a patch of wall where the paint had chipped into the vague shape of a continent. The apartment was doing what it always did, settling. Pipes clicking. Somewhere nearby, a neighbour’s television murmured through thin walls.

He could stay and that was the problem.

Roy stood, reached for his scarf from the back of the chair, and wrapped it once around his neck before he could second-guess himself. He didn’t check the time until he was already at the door.

8:32 PM.

That was late enough to feel intentional, early enough to feel harmless. The city hadn’t crossed into its dangerous hours yet. People were still outside. Somewhere, dinners were still being cleared. Someone was still waiting for someone else to come home.

It should be fine, he told himself.

Outside, the cold met him immediately, sharp but clean. The kind of cold that didn’t threaten it cleared his mind. Roy pulled his hands into his jacket pockets and started walking, not toward anything in particular at first, just away from the building that never quite felt like it belonged to him.

The night had settled into a pale, diluted blue. Not black. Not yet. The sky looked stretched thin, like it hadn’t decided whether it wanted to fully commit.

He looked up without thinking.

Venus was there shining bright, steady, unmistakable. The morning star, shining stubbornly in a sky it didn’t technically belong to. And not far from it, Jupiter burnt deeper and heavier, the night star answering back.

Roy slowed.

They weren’t supposed to be like that. Not usually. Not visible together, not sharing the same stretch of sky so openly. He remembered reading something once about how timing and position had to align just right, how you could go years without seeing them like this.

The morning star and the night star.

Opposites, sharing space.

He wasn’t sure why the thought stayed with him.

The park was a few blocks away, small and forgettable, the kind of place people passed through rather than visited. A rectangle of grass, a few bare trees, a path that looped back into itself. When Roy reached it, he noticed immediately how empty it was.

No joggers. No couples. No kids ignoring the cold for one last run at the swings.

Just silence, stretched thin over open space.

He chose a bench near the edge of the park, positioned so he could see most of it without having to turn his head. Habit. He sat, then shifted, spreading himself across the bench more than sitting upright, one arm draped along the backrest.

His right leg bounced.

Not from nerves. From the cold.

Roy tucked his chin deeper into his scarf and let out a slow breath, watching it fog faintly in front of him before disappearing. The bench was cold through his jacket, but he didn’t move.

The sky was clearer here.

The stars didn’t care that he was tired.

He stayed like that for a while, just long enough for time to stop feeling measured. Long enough for the warmth from dinner to fade completely, leaving behind something duller and heavier.

Footsteps reached him before voices did.

Roy turned his head to the right.

A child and an older man were walking along the path, their silhouettes uneven under the park lights. The child was bundled poorly with a thin jacket, hands bare, shoulders hunched more out of habit than discomfort. The older man wore even less, somehow. A coat that had seen better decades, no scarf, no gloves.

They looked out of place.

The older man was energetic in the way people were when they refused to admit the cold existed. The child lagged behind, but there was something restless in the way he moved, a quiet resilience that didn’t complain.

They stopped at Roy’s bench.

The child sat at one end without hesitation, swinging his legs. The older man followed, settling between them before shifting closer to Roy than expected.

Roy noticed.

He said nothing.

A moment passed. Then another.

The park stayed quiet.

The older man turned his head slightly. ”Who are you?”

Roy blinked, surprised by the directness. He answered automatically. ”My name is Roy Shyam.”

The older man hummed. ”And I ask again. Who are you?”

Roy frowned faintly. ”I just told you.”

The child glanced between them, curious but silent.

What was the deal with this old man?

The older man smiled but not kindly, not cruelly. Just knowingly. ”Names are convenient things, you know,” he said. ”They tell others how to call you. They don’t tell you what you are, though.”

Roy said nothing. He thought this man was just spewing whatever came to his head.

The man leaned back, looking up at the sky as if the answer might be written there. ”All real people have five things,” he continued. ”A name. A place. A role. A status. And an identity.”

Roy felt his leg slow and his ear more available to him.

”You have a name,” the man said. ”You’re sitting in a place. That’s two.”

He turned to look at Roy fully now and Roy looked at him from the side.

”And son,” he said quietly, ”you seem to be missing the rest.”

The child kicked his feet against the bench, unconcerned.

Roy swallowed.

”So I’ll ask you properly,” the man finished. ”Are you real?”

The question didn’t feel aggressive.

That was what made it worse.

Roy stared out at the park. At the empty swings. The dark grass flattened by frost. His reflection is faintly visible in the curved metal of a lamppost.

He thought of the apartment he’d left behind.

Of Kieran’s table.

Of laughter that had flowed around him like water around stone.

”I’m here,” Roy said finally.

The older man nodded. ”So is fog.”

Roy exhaled slowly.

He thought of roles he’d worn and discarded. Student. Freedom fighter. Survivor. Leader. Ghost. Murder. None of them had ever fit for long. They’d slipped off him eventually, left behind in places he couldn’t return to.

Status was worse. Status required continuity. Recognition. A story that others agreed on.

Identity required belief.

The child leaned against the older man’s side, already bored. The older man rested a hand on the child’s shoulder, grounding him there.

”Real people”, the man said, softer now, ”are anchored. Even when they’re lost.”

Roy looked up at the sky again.

Venus still burnt. Jupiter held its place.

Opposites, unmoving.

”I don’t know what I am,” Roy admitted.

The older man studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled, faint and tired. ”That’s honest,” he said. ”And honesty is usually where real things begin.”

The old man let the silence stretch after that, not pressing, not rescuing the moment with reassurance. He kept his gaze on Roy, steady but unintrusive, as if waiting to see whether the words would settle or slide off.

The child swung his legs again, heels knocking softly against the bench. He yawned, wide and unguarded, and leaned his head briefly against the man’s arm.

”I told you it’s cold,” the child muttered.

The older man huffed a quiet laugh. ”You’re the one who wanted to see the stars.”

”They look the same as yesterday.”

”They don’t,” the man replied. ”You just don’t notice the differences yet.”

Roy watched the exchange from the corner of his eye. There was an ease between them that didn’t need explanation. The kind of closeness that came from repetition. From showing up again and again, even when nothing spectacular happened.

The man turned back to Roy. ”Not knowing what you are isn’t the same as being nothing,” he said. ”Most people confuse the two.”

Roy didn’t answer. He was thinking about how easily the word ’nothing’ slipped into conversations lately. How often it waited at the end of thoughts he didn’t want to finish.

The man continued, voice low. ”People like to think identity is something you discover, like a buried artefact. Dig long enough and there it is. Truth is, it’s more like... sediment. Layers. Time. Pressure.”

Roy’s breath fogged again. He watched it fade.

”What if the layers contradict each other?” Roy asked. ”What if they don’t add up to anything solid?”

The man smiled faintly. ”Then congratulations. You’re human.”

Roy almost laughed. Almost.

The child slid off the bench and wandered a few steps away, dragging his shoe through frost-whitened grass. He stopped beneath a lamppost and stared up at the light like it might fall if he waited long enough.

The older man watched him for a moment before speaking again. ”You said you’re here,” he said. ”That’s not nothing. Presence counts. Even fog proves the air is there.”

”That doesn’t make it useful,” Roy replied.

”No,” the man agreed. ”But usefulness isn’t the measure of reality. If it were, most of us would vanish by forty.”

Roy glanced at him then, really looked. At the lines in his face that weren’t just age but repetition. At hands that trembled slightly when they rested, not from weakness but from use.

”What about roles?” Roy asked. ”You said real people have them.”

The man shrugged. ”Roles come and go. You’re a son until you’re not. A worker until you retire. A guardian until the one you’re guarding no longer needs you.” His eyes flicked briefly to the child. ”Or until you’re gone.”

Roy followed his gaze.

”And status?”

”Status is just a story other people agree to tell about you,” the man said. ”It changes the moment they stop paying attention.”

Roy felt something loosen in his chest at that. Not relief. Recognition.

”And what about identity?” Roy asked.

The man was quiet for a while. He leaned back, exhaling slowly, breath visible.

”Identity”, he said at last, ”is what remains when no one is watching and you still choose to exist.”

The words landed without force, like the tide retreating back to the sea. They didn’t demand anything of Roy. They didn’t accuse him of failure or promise him meaning.

They just sat there.

The child returned and climbed back onto the bench, pressing closer to the man this time, cold finally winning its argument. The man adjusted his coat without comment, pulling it around them both.

”We should head back,” the man said, more to the child than to Roy.

The child nodded, already half-asleep on his feet.

The man stood, joints protesting quietly, and offered Roy a nod. ”Take care of yourself,” he said. ”Or don’t. Just... be honest about whichever you choose.”

Roy looked up at him. ”You didn’t answer my question.”

The man paused. ”Which one?”

”Am I real?”

The man smiled, this time kindly. ”That’s not for me to decide,” he said. ”But you asked it. That’s usually a good sign.”

He took the child’s hand, small fingers disappearing into his larger ones, and they walked away down the path, footsteps fading into the quiet.

Roy stayed on the bench.

The park returned to stillness as if nothing had happened. No grand revelation. No closure. Just the bench, the cold, the sky.

Venus and Jupiter still shared the night.

Roy leaned back and closed his eyes, not to sleep but to sit with the feeling that had followed him since dinner. The warmth that hadn’t belonged to him. The laughter that had passed over him without settling.

He thought of Kieran’s smile earlier. Unguarded. Easy. Like someone who knew where he stood.

He was glad for him.

He really was.

But the thought carried its twin again, quiet and persistent.

What about me?

The question didn’t feel sharp anymore. Just tired.

Roy opened his eyes and looked at the stars one last time before standing. His leg no longer bounced. The cold had sunk in fully now, dull and honest.

When he turned to leave the park, the bench was already losing the shape of him.

By the time he reached the street, the city had shifted. Lights dimmed. Voices thinned. The harmless hours were giving way to something quieter.

Roy pulled his scarf tighter and walked on.

Whatever he was, whatever he wasn’t.

He was still here.

For now, that would have to be enough.