Ensō Guild

The conversation about tangents and timers faded, replaced by the hum of the air conditioning unit whirring softly in the background. The city below had quieted down, the frantic energy of the commute dissolving into the steady, lonely rhythm of late-night trucks.

Arjun swirled the amber liquid in his glass, watching a small whirlpool form and vanish. He looked tired. Not just physically, but existentially.

"Kabir," he said, not looking up.

"Hmm?"

"Do you ever feel like we’re just... guessing? Like we’re wearing costumes and hoping the kids don’t notice we have no idea what we’re doing?"

Kabir smiled faintly in the dark. "Every day."

He turned to look at Arjun. "What do you think your job is, Arjun? Not your title. Your job as a father. If you had to write a JD for it, what’s the KPI?"

Arjun exhaled a long breath. "To keep him safe," he said instantly. "To make sure he has options. You know where we came from. My dad worked in a government office for thirty years. We saved money to buy milk. I want Rohan to have the world. I want him to be... secure."

"Secure," Kabir repeated. "And capable?"

"Yes, capable. Competitive. The world is a brutal place, Kabir. You stop running, you get eaten. My job is to make sure he’s fast enough to outrun the others."

Kabir nodded slowly. He stood up and walked to the edge of the balcony, leaning his elbows on the railing.

"You and I," Kabir said, looking out at the skyline, "we are the transition generation. We were born in analog and grew up in digital. But more importantly, we were born in scarcity."

Arjun joined him at the railing. "We did okay."

"We did fantastic," Kabir corrected. "But think about our playbook. For us, education was an exit strategy. It was the only ticket out of a small town. The goal was simple: get the grades, crack the exam, get the placement. Be attractive to a big company. Be a good employee. That was the definition of victory."

"And it works," Arjun insisted. "Look at this flat. It works."

"It worked for us," Kabir said. "Because we were hungry. We were starting from zero. But Rohan? Rohan isn't starting from zero. He’s starting from the finish line you built."

Arjun was silent.

"He has access to more information in his pocket than our entire university library held," Kabir continued. "He doesn't need a job to survive. He doesn't have the fear of poverty snapping at his heels. Yet, you are using the same whip on him that poverty used on you."

Arjun gripped his glass tighter. "So what? Should I tell him to relax? Tell him grades don't matter? He’ll get soft. He’ll get lazy."

"That’s your fear speaking," Kabir said gently. "You’re terrified that without the fear of failure, he won’t move. Because you only moved when you were afraid."

Arjun turned away, pacing back toward the chairs. "I just... I don't know how to parent a child who has everything. I know how to fight for survival. I don't know how to teach... whatever this is." He gestured vaguely at the luxury around them.

"You feel obsolete," Kabir observed.

"I feel like a dinosaur trying to teach a pilot how to fly," Arjun admitted. "But the rules haven't changed, Kabir. Gravity is still gravity. Hard work is still hard work. If he doesn't grind, he doesn't win."

Kabir sat down, crossing his legs. He looked at his friend with a piercing, compassionate intensity.

"The rules of physics haven't changed, Arjun. But the rules of the game have. We played a game of Compliance. We were paid to listen, to follow, to execute. We were paid to be calculators."

Kabir leaned forward.

"If you treat Rohan the way our fathers treated us—if you force him into the same mold, drill the same fears, prioritize the same safety—you will succeed. He will get the grades. He will get the job. He will buy a flat just like this one in twenty years."

Arjun shrugged. "That sounds like a win."

"Is it?" Kabir asked softly.

He let the question hang in the thick air for a moment.

"Look at your life, Arjun. Really look at it. The stress. The sixty-hour weeks. The constant anxiety that you’re one bad quarter away from irrelevance. The fact that you’re drinking alone on a balcony on a Tuesday night because you can’t switch your brain off."

Arjun stiffened.

Kabir’s voice dropped to a whisper, devoid of judgment, full of brutal truth.

"If the rules are the same, and the actions are the same, the outcome will be the same."

Kabir locked eyes with him.

"Do you want him to grow up to be another you?"

Arjun opened his mouth to answer, but the words caught in his throat. He looked at his reflection in the sliding glass door—the graying temples, the expensive shirt, the exhausted eyes.

He stood there for a long time, the silence of the apartment deafening.

"No," Arjun whispered finally. "I want him to be free."