Half Of Me

ASP Arham Afraz, a man whose world had shrunk to crime scenes, cold bullets, and the relentless pursuit of justice.

Until one phone call changed everything.

"Your father, Afraz Meer, has been in an accident."
A pause.

"Your mother was also in the car."

Mother?
They must mean his father's second wife.

Then came the final blow.

"Your father has named you the legal guardian of your younger siblings."

Wait... what?
Siblings?
Guardian?
Did he hear that right?

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Two brothers lived under the same roof, yet the bond between them was tangled in places neither of them knew how to reach.

The elder one had grown up in the shadow of loss.

A childhood carved by unanswered questions, by grief that arrived too early, by a night that stole more than any child should be forced to lose.

And then there was the stepbrother.

Unlike the older one, he had grown up wrapped in warmth, surrounded by voices that called his name with affection.

He had always believed love was something you gave freely, something people naturally returned.

Until his elder brother entered the house.

That was when he first felt it, the distance.
A quiet, cold space between them he couldn't understand, one that made him question himself in ways he never had before.

For the first time, he felt unseen.

At first, he mistook the pull in his chest for guilt, a silent ache telling him he owed something to the elder one whose place in the family had been dimmed for his sake.

But as time passed, he understood it wasn't guilt at all.
It was longing.

Longing for something he had never had to fight for before, a whole family.

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In that same city, buried in some random orphanage, was a boy with a switchblade tongue.

On the surface, he was pure friction, sarcastic, volatile, and permanently looking for a fight.

But if you stripped away the armor, right there in the smallest corner of his chest, was a kid who just wanted a place to belong.

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