In the small, sleepy town of Simurali, nestled between farmlands and flickering yellow streetlights, lived a boy named Sandeep.
Simurali wasn't the kind of place where people hurried. Mornings moved with the rhythm of the temple bells, and evenings echoed with the distant thwack of leather on willow from the cricket field. It was a town rooted in routine, festivals, and familiarity.
Life in Simurali was all about togetherness—neighbors chatting over chai, families huddled around the television during cricket matches, grandmothers shouting from balconies, and children racing barefoot through dusty lanes.
But Sandeep?
Sandeep was different.
He didn't run with the other boys. He didn't join in the games, the gossip, or the festivals. While the neighborhood kids tore through the streets with sparklers during Diwali, Sandeep sat by the window of his room, curtains half-drawn, phone in hand, earphones plugged in, watching Naruto or Attack on Titan.
In the dim glow of his screen, he didn't just escape—he lived.
People in Simurali noticed, of course. They always noticed.
"That boy doesn't talk much."
"Always stuck to that screen of his."
"Too quiet for his own good."
His parents heard it often—in whispers, in sideways glances, in the pauses between conversations at family functions. And sometimes, late at night, his mother would sigh as she folded the laundry.
"You're twenty now, beta," his father would say, shaking his head. "And still watching cartoons?"
Sandeep barely looked up from his glowing screen.
"It's not cartoons, baba," he muttered. "It's anime."
From the kitchen, his mother's voice would rise over the clang of steel vessels.
"Medical college students should be studying, not wasting time on fantasy shows."
But they didn't understand.
They didn't see the way his chest tightened during Naruto's Pain arc, how it comforted him on bad days. They didn't notice how an episode of Attack on Titan left him speechless, eyes wide in the dark. Anime didn't just entertain Sandeep—it anchored him. In a world that felt loud, fake, and far away, it gave him something real.
It wasn't that he didn't want to connect. He tried, in his own quiet ways.
Sometimes, he'd nod at strangers in college wearing anime-themed hoodies. Once, he locked eyes with a guy in a Hunter x Hunter sweatshirt in the library. They nodded at each other silently. That was enough. That was more than he usually got.
One boy from his past still remembered him—Shibam.
They weren't friends. Just old classmates. Same school, same class, years ago. Shibam had always been loud, confident, the kind of guy who cracked jokes in class and got away with them. He used to tease Sandeep—not cruelly, just carelessly, like teenagers do.
"Oye, watching those Japanese cartoons again?" he'd grin.
Sandeep, quiet and unmoved, would respond with the same line every time:
"Baba, it's anime."
That phrase stuck. Became a habit. A shield. Something to repeat when no one understood.
Sandeep and Shibam hadn't spoken in years.
At the end of December, Sandeep boarded the night train back to Simurali for semester break. His final practicals were over, and he longed for three weeks of silence, warm blankets, and uninterrupted anime marathons.
He had downloaded Mob Psycho 100 on his phone. Power bank fully charged. Earphones untangled and ready.
The train was packed. The air smelled of steel and sweat. He slid into his seat, leaned against the cold window, and pressed play. As the train pulled out of Krishnagar station, the outside world blurred into a river of yellow lights and distant silhouettes.
Mob's eyes glowed on screen. The music rose. It was the final fight scene—again. He'd seen it before, but it always hit different.
As the credits rolled, Sandeep unlocked his phone. He typed out a message to no one in particular, just a habit now:
"Mob is still the most underrated MC. Will explain why when I get home."
He didn't send it.
He just saved it in drafts.
Somewhere between Krishnagar and Simurali, in the dead of night, something went terribly wrong.
The train's driver suffered a heart attack.
There was no co-driver.
No one at the controls.
The train kept speeding through the darkness—until it reached a bend it couldn't take.
Steel screamed. Carriages crumpled like paper. Fire licked at the night sky. And then—
Silence.
They found the wreckage by dawn.
Sandeep's body was one of the first they recovered—burnt, unrecognizable, near a window seat. His phone was still clutched in one hand. Screen cracked. Light flickering.
It took hours before someone managed to unlock it and identify him.
When the news reached Simurali, time stopped.
His mother collapsed to the floor.
His father drove to the crash site with trembling hands and dry prayers on his lips.
They were told gently that the body would be released after formal identification.
They didn't need it.
They already knew.
The days that followed blurred into rituals, smoke, and the scent of incense. Visitors came. Tears were shed. People murmured the same phrases again and again.
"He was so young."
"Quiet boy, but good-hearted."
"Such a tragedy."
His room remained untouched.
His phone, broken glasses, and college ID were placed in a small wooden box.
A week later, a post on social media began circulating.
It was from Shibam.
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"I wasn't his friend. Not really. Just a classmate. We barely spoke after school.
But I remember him. He always looked out the window in class. Always quiet.
One time, I forgot my pen—he lent me his without a word.
Another time, I saw him walk a junior to the gate in the rain, holding an umbrella over her head, not saying a word, not waiting to be thanked.
I joked about him watching anime once. He didn't laugh. He just said, 'It's anime.'
That line stuck with me.
I wish I had talked to him more. He wasn't loud, but he was there. A real one.
Rest in peace, Sandeep.
The world noticed you more than you thought."
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That post was shared across student groups.
People from college began adding their own memories.
One shared a photo of Sandeep helping a professor carry books across the corridor.
Another remembered how he'd silently offer his lunch during anatomy lab.
A girl wrote about how he always held the lab door open for her—never said a word, just nodded.
He thought no one noticed.
But they had.
The accident had taken twenty-one lives. Five more were missing. The cause: a heart attack. A missing co-driver. A train that had no one to guide it—until it couldn't go any further.
And in that wreckage, Sandeep's quiet story came to light.
He had always believed he was a loner. That no one really cared.
Even in school, even in college—people tried to reach him, and he turned away.
He saw them as background characters in the story he believed was his alone.
He thought he wasn't special. That if he disappeared, the world would move on.
That—apart from his parents—no one would truly care.
But the truth?
It wasn't just Shibam.
It was all of them.
The people he thought barely noticed him?
They cried.
They remembered.
They mourned.
Because to them, he was kind.
He was real.
He was unforgettable.
The truth is: everyone is special in their own way.
But Sandeep never got the chance to learn that.
Not in this life.
To be continued...
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Authors Note:Thank you for reading this chapter.
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