Vikk's P.O.V.
"Daddy?" I looked down and took the hand of my oldest son, letting him lead me around the playground. He, just 5 years old, and my daughter, 3-year-old, Maya, had been playing on the playground and I had been reading a book, looking up every few seconds to watch them.
But then Lalit came running up to me, saying that Maya had fallen and injured herself and that there were some people helping her. He took my hand and pulled me to where she fell, a pinched and worried look on his face.
Both of my children had traditional Indian names. Lalit meant beautiful because that was the first thing I thought when I looked at him when he was born and my girlfriend, who later became my wife, thought the same thing. Two years later Maya was born and her name meant dream or illusion.
But things fell apart. Just a month after Maya was born my wife, Aruna, whose name meant the dawn light or the rising son, died in a car crash. That left me alone raising my two children as a single dad, working 60 hour work weeks, 6 days a week just so I could put food on the table.
Not that long ago I used to be a YouTuber, part of a group called the Sidemen, but when Aruna got pregnant when we were both 23 I left the group suddenly, with almost no explanation. I moved out of the house and dropped all contact with the boys, all my attention focused on my wife and son.
The reason I left was because I couldn't rely on YouTube as a stable job. I knew it paid a lot but sometime, maybe decades from now, YouTube would crash and I would be left without a job, supporting my family alone. Aruna couldn't work, instead she was a stay-at-home mother.
So I went out and got a 'real' job, something I could rely on where the money was okay and it was stable. But then Aruna died and I had to leave the job, finding a minimum wage job with more flexible working hours, which completely destroyed me.
"There!" Lalit pointed to where Maya lay on the ground, being helped by a group of men about my age. I ignored them and instead went for my daughter, hugging her close.
"Daddy!" She cried out, hugging me tightly. There was a large gash on the underneath of her chin which was bleeding everywhere and I pressed the cloth that had been given to me onto it, knowing that we had to go to the hospital.
"Come on Lalit, I think we're going to have to go to hospital." I scooped my little girl up into my arms and Lalit reached up, taking hold of the pocket of my jeans so he wouldn't get lost.
I looked up to say thank you to the men who had helped her when I stopped, taking in their faces.
"Vikk?" One of them asked. "Is that you?"
I looked around them and was just about to speak when Lalit piped up.
"Daddy! They're the people on the cover of the book with you!" I nodded, looking down at him.
"They are, good spotting!" I smiled to myself. He was a very observant boy and I still had the Sidemen book sitting very prominently on a bookshelf in the living room and Lalit often liked pointing out all of the books on the shelves, making up names for the people on the covers and trying to read the titles of the books.
"Dad?" I knew that was Josh, he really hadn't changed much in the 5 years since I had last seen him. I didn't look at their YouTube channels. "You're a dad?"
"Yes." I said tensely, checking the cut on Maya's chin. The bleeding was slowly down and when I looked closer I saw that the cut wasn't actually that bad, it wouldn't need stitches, it had just bled a lot. The tears had stopped falling down her cheeks and she started squirming in my arms, wanting to get down.
