Behind every silent man, there is a house filled with voices. Some laugh. Some cry. And some simply hope louder than the world allows. Aarav Malik's home, tucked in the heart of a forgotten alley, was one such orchestra of survival.
Paint peeled from the walls like tired promises. The fans wobbled when they worked, and the floor tiles were more crack than ceramic. But love lived here—restless, overworked, and hungry.
He had five sisters.
Yes, five.
The eldest, Zoya, was twenty-six and already carried the shame of "still being at home" in a society obsessed with ticking marital checkboxes. She was quiet, graceful, and stitched hope into every dupatta she folded.
Then came Farah and Sameen—twins who never agreed on anything except that they were too young to give up on dreams. Farah wanted to be a teacher. Sameen wanted to act. Reality wanted neither.
Noor, the fourth, was sixteen and the loudest. She believed life would work out, because "bad things happen in dramas, not real life." She still had magic in her. Aarav feared how long it would last.
And then the youngest, Aaira—ten years old, a hurricane with a lisp, who thought Aarav was a superhero just pretending to be poor for a mission.
But superheroes have weaknesses.
His mother, Sofia Malik, lay on a charpai in the living room, her body thin as threads, breath wheezing like rusted machinery. Her medicines were imported and cruelly priced—two days of pills could swallow a week's worth of Aarav's wages.
And then—
As if fate had a personal vendetta—his father, Imtiaz Malik, came home one evening with an envelope.
"Office's shutting down," he muttered, sitting down without taking off his shoes. "Clerk jobs are going digital now. They said I'm too slow for the system."
Silence followed.
Zoya stopped cutting vegetables. Noor stopped humming. Aarav just stood, eyes locked on the envelope, on the invisible blow it carried.
That night, no one ate dinner. The rice stayed cold, the rotis hardened, and the walls absorbed their hunger.
Aarav lay on the rooftop, eyes tracing constellations he couldn't name, and whispered to the stars,
"How am I supposed to carry all of this?"
Weddings.
Medicines.
Rent.
Electricity.
Five dreams in five sisters.
One failing body.
One broken father.
And one mechanic shop with oil-stained floors and a mentor who slapped more than he spoke.
But that shop…
That shop was all they had now.
The only light left in the storm.
So the next morning, before the sun even dared to rise, Aarav tied a dirty cloth around his forehead, slipped into his grease-covered kurta, and walked back into Iqbal Garage.
Because from now on, he wasn't just working.
He was fighting.
For medicine. For mehndis. For bills and bangles and a mother's breath.
And in his silence, something had shifted.
Not rage.
Not revenge.
But responsibility.
And it sat on his shoulders like a crown made of iron.