The Empty Seat

Inside, the apartment was a sanctuary of order and profound silence. The polished concrete floors were cool underfoot, the walls a serene off-white, adorned with nothing more than the shifting patterns of light and shadow. The only sounds were the soft, rhythmic click of a keyboard and the distant, melodic chime of a wind bell dancing on the balcony. A single stick of sandalwood incense burned in a simple brass holder, its fragrant, woody smoke coiling slowly towards the high ceiling, scenting the air with a familiar, calming perfume.
This was the world Chunmun Singh had built for himself in the years since the fall. A world of clean lines, quiet discipline, and meticulous control. He was now a Lead Enterprise Architect for one of Australia's biggest tech firms, a position of considerable respect and influence. His colleagues here knew him as a quiet, intensely focused genius-a man whose mind could hold the continent-spanning complexity of their digital infrastructure with an almost supernatural ease.
They respected his boundaries, his preference for solitude, and his polite refusal of after-work drinks. They saw a man of immense discipline; they did not see the architecture that discipline was built upon. He was successful. He was, by all external measures, at peace. His vow remained. Thirteen years had stretched into fifteen, then twenty. The record of Lakshmana was a landmark long since passed, no longer a goal but simply a feature of his past.
The vow was no longer a practice; it was the very essence of his being, the still point in his turning world. And the gift it had bestowed upon him remained as well. The silent, chaotic symphony of other people's thoughts was a constant hum at the edge of his awareness. Over the years, he had learned to mute it, to build psychic walls that filtered the noise, allowing him to exist in the world without being consumed by it.
It was a tool he rarely used, a sense he kept veiled. Then, a notification bloomed silently on his screen, a simple, automated reminder he had set years ago and forgotten. The stark, black text seemed to absorb all the light in the room: "Anniversary: Great Ocean Road."