Hello. My name is Vidar.
My father named me after the Norse god, the Silent One, inspired by the old myths he'd loved since he first played God of War as a kid. A god who barely spoke, and still tore a wolf apart with his bare hands. Fitting, maybe, more than he knew.
I was quiet. Ambivert, if you want the word for it. Talk to me and I'll talk back. Leave me alone and I'll stay gone. But underneath the quiet was something else, something I didn't have a name for until much later. Whenever I saw someone innocent get hurt, get bullied, get cornered, something in me lit up that I couldn't explain and couldn't control.
Tenth Standard
That's where it started.
I was thin, painfully thin, and my classmates called me "skeleton." Said flatly, like it was just a fact about me. I wasn't the topper. Wasn't anyone's idea of promising. Average. Forgettable. Mostly I slept through class.
Every school has a Dinesh, some kid who treats the weaker ones as entertainment. One day he flicked a chalk piece at a girl in front of me. It hit her back. She turned, saw me, and told the teacher I'd thrown it.
I hadn't. Nobody believed me. Straight to the principal's office.
Our principal, a devout Jain, apologized to the teacher on my behalf, gave me a short lecture on patience, and sent me back to class like the matter was closed.
Not a free period that time. I sat down. The girl was laughing, openly, making sure I saw it.
I don't know where it came from. One second I was absorbing it like I always did. The next, I'd flipped the steel table with both hands.
The sound swallowed the corridor. One flat bang. Every classroom on that floor went silent. It usually took three people to move that table.
My classmates panicked before I did. By the time a teacher arrived, they'd already agreed the bench had slipped while they were moving it. Nobody mentioned me.
The Job
Like every middle-class parent, mine had a plan for me. Someone told my father that a psychology degree could lead to counselling, steady, respectable work. So I did a B.Sc in Psychology. My own dream had been automobile engineering. I let it go for his advice. He passed away not long after. I tried for an MBA afterward, but time and circumstance closed that door too. Now I hold a degree that has nothing to do with the job I actually do, at a US-based company, doing work that doesn't match either my training or my interest.
Three years. Same salary. Circumstances I can't fully control keep me pinned in place. The money lands in your account like lightning, brilliant for a second, then gone before you've even understood you had it.
I thought the anger from school had burned out somewhere along the way. It hadn't. Two years into becoming "senior," it started coming back, randomly, without warning. I learned to manage it with music, headphones in, world shut out. But sometimes it still erupts, like a volcano that doesn't check the calendar.
You do the work. All of it, correctly. One small mistake, the kind Ctrl+Z would fix in half a second, and your manager talks like you deleted the entire sheet. You ask for leave, and suddenly you're "the best, we need you here." You ask for a raise, and suddenly the question is: what exactly have you done?
The anger built like something psychotic, honestly. But you adjust. You have to. You were born middle class. There's rent, there's your parents' tablets, there's the EMI, there's always something eating the next paycheck before it arrives.
One day it was a minor issue. Nothing, really. But my manager tore into me like I was born specifically to be scolded by him. I walked back to my desk, picked up a screwdriver, and started toward his desk to put it in his neck. My mother called at exactly that moment. That call is the only reason I'm not in a cell right now, or worse.
I don't talk to my colleagues much. In an office, you never know who's a snake, who's a fox, and who's actually decent. So I keep my mouth shut and let them think whatever they want. Mostly they think I'm the guy with the anger problem. Something to be entertained by.
Present
A girl came into the office. I took her to the guest room, told her to rest. She wasn't fragile about it. She told me straight: don't show me pity. If you hadn't shown up, I would have killed them myself. I told her I wasn't doing her any favors. That I saw her like a sister, that I have a little sister of my own.
My shift ended at 7 AM. She was gone by then, no goodbye. Just a note left behind: whatever. Thanks..
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