In a corner of the city sat that same salt-crusted mess house. Niloy stood by the window, gripping the iron grill as he watched the rain pour down. To him, the rain wasn't just falling from the sky; it was a cloud of sorrow gathering inside his chest, growing heavier by the day. He lightly touched the last twenty-taka note in his pocket. Whether this money would buy tomorrow's breakfast or a pen refill for his sister's notebook was a calculation that made him feel more imprisoned than the peeling walls of his room.
In the very next room, the fan of an old laptop groaned. Ayan stared at the screen where his 'WebNovel' page was open. Tonight, his eyes burned more from anxiety than from lack of sleep. His father's frail voice from yesterday's phone call kept echoing in his mind—"Take care of yourself, son." Ayan knew that "taking care" was a code for the fact that the rice sack at home was nearly empty.
Ayan began to write. He wrote about boys like Niloy, whose wings of dreams were caged in the struggle of middle-class life. Meanwhile, Niloy pulled over his diary and began to write about soldiers of the pen like Ayan, who search for the dawn even in the thickest darkness.
Suddenly, the power went out. The entire house was plunged into pitch-black darkness. Both Ayan and Niloy stood by their respective windows. Looking at the shimmering city in the distance, Niloy wondered, "Will we just get lost in this crowd?" Just then, he heard Ayan whispering from the next room—"As long as there is ink in the pen, the battle doesn't stop."
Ayan kept typing in the dark until the last drop of his battery died. Niloy lit a half-burnt candle and transformed his silent screams into words on the pages of his diary. They might be strangers to each other, but their destination was the same. They knew that while the world could be cruel, their dreams were not bound by any chains.
That night, they both went to bed hungry. But in their dreams, there was a sun-drenched morning—a morning where the walls of their home would no longer crumble, where no father would have to call out of fear, and no younger sister would have to wait for a notebook. Their unfinished manuscripts would one day become their sky of freedom.