Chapter 1
There was a boy named Epa.
Twenty-five years old.Height 5.8.Weight 72.An average body with good genes and soft features that still carried innocence in them.
Epa was once a mechanical engineer, but now he was slowly building his career on YouTube as a podcaster. After five years of hard work, sleepless nights, editing videos alone, and talking to a camera when nobody believed it would work, he had finally reached six lakh subscribers along with a few good sponsorships.
But honestly, none of this happened because of Epa alone.
Because Epa was never built for the world outside.
Outside the house, he was an introvert. Quiet. Awkward sometimes. The kind of person who listened more than he spoke.
But inside his home?
He became someone else completely.
Loud. Annoying. Dramatic. Childish.
Transparent about everything.
That was because Rose and Theo never raised Epa like a son.
They raised him like a friend.
Like someone whose smile mattered more than their own pain.
Epa was innocent in a way that felt rare nowadays. Even at twenty-five, he still hadn’t truly seen the other face of the world. The cruel face. The dark side hidden inside people.
Because between Epa and the world stood his parents like a wall.
They swallowed every darkness life threw at them and only handed happiness to their son.
Rose.
Forty-four years old.
A school principal. Calm, composed, disciplined. The kind of woman who could silence an entire room just by looking at it. But beneath her calmness lived someone who had once seen the ugliest side of humanity and survived it.
Theo.
Forty-five years old.
A mural artist who believed life should be beautiful no matter how cruel the world became. Loud music, paint-stained hands, random jokes, midnight drives — Theo carried life like a festival even after everything he had survived.
They loved each other from their teenage years.
Rose was eighteen.
Theo was nineteen.
Too young to understand life, but old enough to choose each other against the world.
When Epa was born, they left their village with nothing in their hands except their child and each other.
No money.
No family.
No support.
Only fear and hope.
Years later, they built a beautiful life from absolutely nothing.
A peaceful home.
Three cars parked outside.
A successful son upstairs editing podcasts.
A quiet garden.
Warm lights.
Laughter inside the walls.
They built everything with bleeding hands just so Epa would never feel the pain they once felt.
But Rose and Theo made one mistake.
They thought the darkness had ended.
They never imagined it had only been waiting.
Waiting patiently for Epa.
Epa had never seen Rose’s parents.Never seen Theo’s parents.Never met relatives from either side.
Whenever he asked, Theo and Rose would smile softly and say the same thing:
“They didn’t accept our love marriage. We ran away. They abandoned us after that.”
Even hearing that alone used to break Epa’s heart. He could never understand how parents could abandon their own children.
But that story was barely two percent of the truth.
The real truth was something Rose and Theo buried with their own hands long ago.
Because they knew their son.
Epa had a soft soul.
A human heart untouched by cruelty.
And they wanted him to stay that way.
So they guarded the past like wounded soldiers standing in front of fire.
Every happy birthday.
Every family dinner.
Every joke.
Every vacation.
Every late-night conversation.
Rose and Theo built all of it carefully around Epa like armor.
And Epa?
He truly believed he was the luckiest boy in the world.
Sometimes he would sit alone in his room and wonder what good deed he had done to deserve parents like them.
A mother who still waited awake until he came home.
A father who still treated him like his best friend.
He had never seen them fight seriously.
Never seen hatred inside the house.
Only warmth.
Only love.
Only safety.
And maybe that was the cruelest thing about life.
The people who grow up loved never expect darkness to enter their homes.
Welcome to Epa’s house.
A beautiful 3BHK home filled with warmth.
The hall always carried the smell of coffee and paint. The kitchen belonged entirely to Rose. The first floor held Rose and Theo’s bedroom, quiet and organized like her personality.
The second floor belonged mostly to Epa.
His room.
His podcast studio.
Rose’s bookshelf corner near the balcony where yellow lights glowed softly during rainy evenings.
Outside, beside the garage, Theo had built his own little painting studio where unfinished murals leaned silently against walls.
Three cars stood parked outside the house.
Proof of how far they had come from nothing.
But to Rose and Theo, none of those things were their real success.
Epa was.
Their son was the center of their entire world.
The reason they survived.
The reason they kept living.
And Epa had been loved so deeply by them that he never learned how terrifying the world could become.
But soon, their beloved son was going to face truths far more horrifying than simple darkness.
Even the evil Rose and Theo once escaped…
Epa was going to walk directly into it.
And the most painful part?
Rose and Theo were ready to suffer again themselves.
But they never prepared Epa for it.
Because after all these years…
they truly believed it was over.
And now—
slowly, carefully—
we are stepping into Epa’s life.
Not the version people saw online.
Not the cheerful podcaster with six lakh subscribers and funny midnight rants.
But the real Epa.
The son Rose and Theo protected for twenty-five years.
The boy who still believed kindness existed everywhere.
The boy who had never truly met cruelty before.
The soft blue LED lights from the studio reflected across Epa’s face as he adjusted his headphones and leaned closer to the microphone.
“Okay, okay,” he laughed while reading the live chat. “First of all, whoever said pineapple pizza deserves jail time… I agree.”
Thousands of laughing emojis flooded the stream instantly.
Epa grinned.
This was his comfort place.
No pressure.
No fake personality.
Just him talking nonsense for hours while strangers online somehow enjoyed it.
The room around him felt alive in its own messy way. Wires near the desk. Half-finished coffee beside the keyboard. Theo’s tiny painted keychain hanging from the mic stand. Rose’s habit of leaving cut fruits near his monitor before every livestream.
Home existed even inside this room.
“Buddy,” Epa continued dramatically, “if aliens are real, why are they always naked in movies? Like, bro, wear pants first before invading Earth.”
The chat exploded again.
But then Epa noticed one message.
Hi.
He smiled casually.
“Hello, hello,” he read while adjusting his chair. “How are you doing?”
Two seconds later—
Hi.
Again.
Then again.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello.
Epa frowned slightly.
The same account.
Same profile picture.
Same blank ID.
The messages kept appearing repeatedly inside the live chat.
At first, Epa laughed it off.
“Okay buddy,” he joked lightly, “I saw your message. Relax.”
But the account continued.
Hi.
Hello.
Hi.
Hello.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Within barely five minutes of the livestream starting, the account had already spammed more than fifty messages.
Even the subscribers started noticing.
“Bro who is this?”
“Craziest fan ever 😭”
“Admin ban him.”
“Bro desperate for attention.”
Epa tried acting normal.
He continued talking.
Continued joking.
Continued laughing.
But something about it felt strange.
Not funny strange.
Uncomfortable strange.
The account never reacted to anything he said.
Never answered properly.
Only:
Hi.
Hello.
Hi.
Hello.
Like someone knocking endlessly on a locked door.
Epa’s smile slowly weakened.
Then his phone vibrated beside the keyboard.
Instagram notification.
Same ID.
His eyebrows tightened.
For a second, he thought maybe it was just a weird fan trying to get attention.
But when he opened the DM—
his stomach dropped.
A disgusting message.
Not only about him.
About Rose.
About Theo.
Words so filthy and hateful that Epa physically recoiled from the screen.
His face immediately lost color.
For five years online, Epa had somehow avoided people like this. Maybe because he stayed away from controversy. Maybe because his content was harmless.
But this?
This felt ugly.
Rotten.
Personal.
The livestream still continued in front of him.
People kept commenting.
Laughing.
Waiting for him to continue talking.
But Epa suddenly didn’t feel like speaking anymore.
The room that once felt warm now felt strangely smaller.
The same notification appeared again.
Another disgusting message.
Then another.
Epa instantly blocked the account.
Without even properly ending the conversation, he looked back at the livestream camera and forced a weak smile.
“Okay guys… I think that’s enough for tonight. See you tomorrow.”
He ended the stream immediately.
Silence filled the room.
For a few seconds, Epa just sat there staring at the dark monitor screen.
Disturbed.
Not angry.
Disturbed.
Because the words kept replaying inside his head.
Especially the ones about his parents.
Downstairs, the smell of dinner slowly drifted through the house.
Normally that smell comforted him instantly.
Tonight, it didn’t.
When Epa walked into the dining area, Theo was already serving food while Rose arranged plates quietly.
Theo looked up first.
“Oho,” he said immediately. “Why does our celebrity look like he lost a war?”
Usually Epa would laugh.
Tonight he only sat down silently.
Rose noticed the change instantly.
“What happened?”
Epa hesitated for a moment before explaining everything.
The livestream.
The spam messages.
The Instagram DMs.
The disgusting words.
As he spoke, Theo’s smile slowly faded while Rose listened quietly without interrupting.
“That’s disgusting,” Epa muttered finally. “Why would someone even talk like that about strangers?”
Theo sighed softly and sat beside him.
“There are people like that everywhere, da.”
“Just ignore them,” Rose added gently. “Some people throw their bitterness at others because they have nothing else inside them.”
“But why amma?” Epa asked honestly. “I didn’t even do anything.”
Neither Theo nor Rose answered immediately.
Because unlike Epa—
they knew exactly how cruel people could become.
Theo rubbed Epa’s shoulder lightly.
“You block them and move on. Don’t carry garbage inside your head.”
Epa nodded slowly, but the discomfort still remained inside him.
The truth was simple.
Epa had grown up so loved, so protected, that even hearing those filthy words felt unbearable to him.
Rose and Theo had spent twenty-five years shielding their son from the ugliness of the world.
But neither of them realized—
this was only the beginning.
