The Manual of Survival: For Those Who Stayed — A Short Story by Fendy S. Tulodo

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he boy kept a notebook built from torn scraps and used receipts, stuck together with brittle tape. He called it The Manual of Survival, writing crooked and smeared with grime. Some pages smelled like glue, others like rain, and once he said the ink was mixed with his own spit. “It helps it stay,” he told me. I didn’t ask what he meant.

He lived near the bus stop, where horns blared instead of songs. People knew him as Q, even though his name was Qadir. When he spoke, his mouth rushed, like words could be taken if he didn’t let them go fast. He said rap saved his bones from cracking. That’s how he put it: cracking. I didn’t understand until I heard him perform behind the half-broken tea stall. He didn’t need beats, he just hit the table with his knuckles and turned breath into rhythm. Every verse was like a heartbeat that refused to die.

The city he came from wasn’t really a city. It was a place that forgot to grow. Between the hills, concrete walls looked like unfinished sentences. There were military trucks that passed every morning, leaving tire marks that looked like black veins. People stopped counting years because seasons were strange now: snow came late, and sometimes it rained ash from the factories down south. Everyone still called it “the silent village,” even though the silence had long been replaced by radio static and slogans.

Q said the village taught him to rhyme because it spoke in fragments. “Even the sky rhymes with itself here,” he said once.

“See how the clouds loop the same pattern, like they stuck in a beat.”

He smiled, small and tired.

He sold used books near the bridge, the sort travelers always passed by. Mostly worn poetry, diaries, and a single row of encyclopedias too heavy for anyone to take. That’s where I first saw him. I picked up a book on forgotten lands, and he covered it in old newsprint like it meant something hidden. When I asked why he bothered, he said, “If I act like each book counts, maybe someday someone’ll read my own like it does.”

He said he wrote about folks with no names. He said every verse needed a ghost. Some of his lyrics went like this:

“The road keeps counting what the feet forgot,
Names lost in the smoke, memories rot,
Mama said keep still, but I never could stop,
‘Cause silence in my head sounds like gunshots.”

He chuckled after, but his eyes stayed flat.

Sometimes he rode the bus to the edge of town to see a friend who taped his verses. They used an old mic from a wedding setup, the type that crackled if you got too near. The room doubled as a tailoring shop, so you could hear the sewing machine between takes. He said the noise didn’t matter. “It’s real, man. The world hums like this. Nobody gets pure sound anymore.”

At night, he slept in a room behind the book stall. The owner let him stay because Q once helped his son with homework. The boy couldn’t read English well, and Q, who’d learned from discarded textbooks, sat beside him every evening, explaining words like justice and border and truth. Words that adults around here used too loosely.

One night, the power went out. The entire street turned into a low hum of candlelight. Q sat near the doorway, writing something. I asked what it was. He said it was a track called The Frozen Metronome. Got it from a dream... world froze, but no one realized. “Feels like that now,” he said, voice low. “We move, but something inside just quit.”

He handed me the lyrics, scratched across the page, half English, half Urdu. Lines spilled out, raw, some bitter, all restless. Wrote about faces with no name, eyes showing cities instead of thoughts, roads buzzing with power that wasn’t theirs. Never said God, but every line felt like a prayer too heavy to finish.

Next morning, I saw him facing an officer. The stall had been pushed aside, books scattered like fallen birds. Someone had accused him of selling banned pamphlets. He kept saying he didn’t. When the cop walked off, Q bent down, picked each book slow, wiped the dirt, set them back in line. “They only see threat,” he murmured, “never the words it holds.”

I wished I could help, but a direct ask never came. He only wondered if I knew someone with fast internet, good enough to upload his demo. “People gotta hear how ugly truth gets when you make it rhyme,” he said. I told him I’d try. That night, a file came through Bluetooth. Rough. His voice broke in spots, but it held you. Felt like pain trying to become music.

Seven days passed before I saw him again. He seemed smaller. Maybe it was the winter air. I asked if he’d eaten. He shrugged, said food throws off his flow. Then he grinned, and I saw he meant every bit.

We showed up at the same bus stop, beside the mural of a dove holding a flag. Black streaks crossed its wings... someone had painted them in, like bars. He stared hard. “Most think freedom means you can fly,” he said low. “Truth is, it’s about not needing to.” I couldn’t answer. So I stayed still.

Later, when the buses rumbled by, he muttered, almost quiet, “If I get through, I’m putting out an album... Manual of Survival, Volume 2.”

“Where’s Volume 1?” I asked.
“This,” he said, tapping his notebook. “And whatever comes next.”

Next morning, he wasn’t there. The stall was closed, books gone. I asked the shopkeeper, who said Q had left at dawn, carrying only his notebook and a duffel bag. “Said he got a call from someone in Srinagar,” the man said, “a producer maybe.”

Weeks later, I found a message on my phone:
“Keep the hills loud. Tell them I wrote it all down.”
No sender name. No trace.

But on the few nights the city goes still, I hear it. The quiet, constant tap of his finger on that worn table. The beat comes back, low but sharp, like a metronome starting up after years.

The rumor spread first through the chai vendors, then the bus drivers, then the tailors. They said a boy from the hills had gone viral. A track recorded in a tin-roof room had reached Delhi, maybe even Dubai. Nobody knew the full story, only fragments. Some said the beat was made from old train noises. Some said he’d used soldiers’ radio chatter in the background. All agreed... the words cut too deep to be random.

I didn’t buy it until I heard it myself. The track was named The Echo That Never Fades. It started with a pause, then a low hum, then Q’s voice: half tired, half burning. The first verse went,

“If truth had a face, it would wear a mask,
If peace was a coin, it’d flip too fast,
My town sleeps under curfew glass,
Counting the hours like broken math.”

Then came silence. The kind that didn’t end. Even the cheap speakers seemed to hesitate. The second verse sounded older, almost heavy. He talked about the hills as if they were witnesses, about names carved on walls, about boys who turned sixteen and vanished. “They say we too loud,” he said mid-verse, “but how else we survive?”

When the track ended, the room I was in felt colder. The others just nodded, pretending they understood. But I couldn’t move. His voice didn’t sound like Q anymore. It sounded like someone who had seen too much and finally stopped trying to fix it.

The next morning, the internet had already labeled him the ghost rapper from the border. No one knew who he really was. A blurry image spread... supposedly his notebook, but just a wrinkled page of words in red-stained ink. Reporters came to the terminal, asking questions. The shopkeeper where he once slept told them, “He was nobody special.” Then he locked the shutters early that night.

For weeks, the town played his track like it was a national anthem. Kids tried to copy his rhymes, but no one got the same rhythm. A few thought it was about rebellion. Others called it mourning. One guy printed the verses on shirts, sold them by the market stand. I took one, even with half the words misspelled.

I kept looking for a sign he was alive. Maybe another upload, maybe a photo somewhere. But nothing. Not even a rumor. It was like he’d dissolved into the signal itself. I checked the file metadata once... yeah, stupid, I know... and found coordinates. Kashmir, obviously, but also an extra line that read: Track recorded near water. Beware the reflection.

I moved just a little. A thin creek slid between soft hills, so small you could hop across and keep your boots dry. The setting sun turned the water a fake gold, like those shiny coins you see but never spend. I didn’t leave. I didn’t speak. Just stood. The air held that sharp scent of rusted iron and dirt just turned.

Then I heard it: faint tapping. Like knuckles on wood. I looked around. Nothing. Then again: tap, tap, tap-tap. It came from the bridge. I walked closer, and there it was... Q’s notebook, tied with a string, hanging from the railing. Half soaked, pages curling like petals. On the cover, he’d written new words in blue ink:

“If the beat stops, don’t fix it.
Let silence rhyme too.”

I took it home, dried it page by page. The last few pages had smudged lines, unreadable, but one sentence stood clear near the end:

“Every map is a confession.”

No name after it. Just a sketch of a metronome missing its swing.

Days passed. Then a note slid under my door. No return address. Inside, one line printed in uneven typewriter font:

“Volume 2 is for the ones who stayed.”

It came with a small USB drive. The file inside was untitled. When I played it, I heard the hum of static, then Q’s voice, quieter this time.

“Hey... if you hearing this, it means I made it somewhere. Maybe nowhere. I dunno. I was thinking... maybe surviving ain’t about living forever. Maybe it’s about not deleting yourself before someone remembers your verse. Anyway... record’s still spinning, right?”

A pause. Then, softer:

“Wait... maybe it’s not spinning. Maybe it’s breathing.”

Then came silence again. Thick. Long. Like after a prayer ends.

I stayed seated, headphones on, watching rain hit the glass. The sound outside started syncing with the faint static from the file. And for a second, it really felt like the hills were breathing.

I sent the file to a friend in Delhi who ran a small music blog. He asked if he could post it. I said yes, but only if he used the name Qadir. No mystery title, no “ghost rapper” nonsense. Just Qadir. He agreed. A few days later, the post went up. It didn’t go viral this time. Only a few hundred people listened. Some said it felt unfinished. Others said it hit them hard, didn’t know why.

But for me, it was enough. His name was somewhere now. On a page. In a playlist. Between strangers’ ears.

I returned to the terminal one last time, just checking. The dove painting had vanished, covered by some ad. The tea stand shut tight, boards on the windows. The old seller handed out lottery slips instead of novels. And where Q used to freestyle... empty. Just cracked concrete. But when the wind came, a plastic bottle skittered, hitting rhythm... tap, tap, tap-tap. I smiled.

“Still practicing, huh?” I whispered.

Nobody answered, of course. But that night, I recorded my own verse. Nothing fancy, no rhyme even. Just me speaking into my phone, saying what he once said to me:

“If I treat every word like it matters, maybe one day someone will treat mine the same.”

I sent it nowhere. I saved it under the name Manual of Survival, Volume 3. Then I closed the file and didn’t play it again.

Because maybe that’s how echoes work.
Not by repeating the same sound, but by teaching you to listen differently.

And sometimes, when the city finally shuts up, I swear the hills hum back. Not loud. Not even clear. But steady, like a rhythm remembering where it came from.