The days that followed felt like an endless cycle of learning to fit into a world that didn’t want him. Andro spent hours watching people in cafés, at bus stops, on the streets, observing how they interacted with each other—often without truly engaging. The screens were always there, between them, like an invisible barrier no one seemed willing to break.

  Andro’s attempts at meaningful conversation were met with bemused glances, empty responses, or uncomfortable silences. He tried asking people about their lives, their thoughts, but they just looked at him with confusion. The questions he asked felt out of place. People didn’t have time for real connections anymore. They were too busy—too distracted.

  “Hey, how’s your day going?” he’d ask a young woman in the park, trying to keep his voice light and casual.

  “Good, I guess,” she’d reply, her eyes glued to her phone. She didn’t even look up. “Busy. You know, stuff. Gotta go.”

  And that was it. The conversation ended before it even started. The emptiness in her eyes lingered in his mind. He wasn’t angry—he was just confused. Why had everything become so detached? Why couldn’t people just be present with each other anymore?

  He couldn’t grasp it. He couldn’t understand how it felt so normal for people to be so... emotionally unavailable. It was like they wore masks made of glass—shiny and perfect on the outside, but empty within.

  Every interaction felt like a tiny wound, a small cut to his heart. He wanted to reach through the glass, to ask them: Is this really what you want? Is this the life you dreamed of? But the words never came.

  He started to withdraw, not because he wanted to, but because the constant clash between his soul and the world around him wore him down. The kindness he had carried so proudly in the 1990s was now a burden. He was becoming weary of it. He had been called weak, too emotional, too na?ve. The whispers, the looks—he could feel them all. The world didn’t care about kindness anymore. People valued success, image, and strength—whatever that meant in this fast-paced, disconnected world.

  He began to question himself more and more. Was he wrong? Was his kindness something that needed to be buried in order to survive? The temptation to shut down and become like everyone else—detached, unfeeling, cold—was always there, just beneath the surface.

  One evening, after yet another failed attempt to connect with a group of people at a local bar, Andro found himself in a quiet alley. The neon lights from the nearby street corner flickered as he walked, his steps slow and heavy. He leaned against the brick wall, his hand clutching his phone as he stared at the screen. It was filled with messages, notifications, but none of them brought him any comfort.

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  His mind drifted to his childhood, to the simplicity of life back in the 1990s. Back then, people knew each other’s names. They stopped to chat, they helped each other out. The world wasn’t perfect, but at least there was some humanity left.

  Now, he felt like a stranger, even to himself. His mind raced with questions: How did I end up here? What happened to the world I knew? Why does it feel like I’m suffocating in this modern age?

  He tried to hold on to his father’s words—“Kindness is strength, Andro. Never forget that.” But they felt distant now, like a song playing from another lifetime. The world seemed to tell him the opposite. Kindness wasn’t strength—it was a weakness. It was something to be exploited, ridiculed, or ignored.

  A text message popped up on his phone. It was from Eli, a friend he had met at the church. He had known Eli for years, back in the 1990s. Even though Andro’s presence in this new world had made him feel like an alien, Eli was one of the few people who seemed to understand him, who still cared.

  “Are you okay, Andro?” the message read. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. You seem... different.”

  Andro’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. What could he say? How could he explain to Eli what he was feeling, what he was going through? He didn’t even know himself.

  “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know how to be in this world.” He typed, then paused, unsure.

  He deleted the message. He didn’t want to burden anyone. No one understood, and he couldn’t even find the words to explain himself. He pressed the phone to his chest for a moment before slipping it back into his pocket.

  He closed his eyes, feeling the cool night air brush against his skin. The city around him seemed like a dream, distant and unreachable. The streets buzzed with life, but it was all just noise. There was no soul, no heart to it. It was a place where people were too busy with their own worlds to care about anyone else.

  Suddenly, a thought struck him. It wasn’t just the world that had changed—it was him, too. Time had swept him away, pulled him from everything he knew, and now, in this strange, cold future, he had to decide: would he let the world change him, too? Would he abandon the things that had defined him for so long? Or would he fight to remain true to himself, no matter the cost?

  What if being kind in this world really did make me weak? he thought. What if I’m just holding on to something that no longer matters?

  But then he remembered something his mother used to say: “The world may change, Andro, but your heart should always remain the same. Don’t let anyone take your goodness away.”

  He breathed in deeply, the weight of the decision pressing down on him. His heart clenched, but he knew what he had to do.

  The world may have changed, but he wasn’t going to let it change him. He would remain kind. Even if it hurt. Even if it felt like the whole world was against him.

  Because that was the price of staying pure.