He just had to reveal his existence.
Yet he was reluctant about it. Revealing your presence means instantly becoming the target of all people. However, revealing its existence is essential, otherwise it cannot be adopted without even an identity.
So he adjusted himself, looking at his reflection in front of a shop window. He carefully looked at his clothes and tried to make himself look like children who had come to the orphanage before.
"Hey, get out of here you little beggar!"
When the shopkeeper chased him, he pouted and flew out of there as fast as a rabbit.
He took a deep breath and slumped his shoulders, mimicking the previous children. When he felt that he had become as harmless and innocent as possible, he moved forward with a shaky and weak look.
"Oh boy, what are you doing here? Where is your family?"
The woman squinted her eyes and asked questions as if going through a normal formality.
She knew this question. It was no different than a job interview asked at the gathering of every homeless child.
Instead of answering, he grabbed the pole and got behind him and looked at the woman in front of him, startled.
Actually, he wasn't just acting, he was really nervous and scared. Every time people's eyes were aimed at him, he was more likely to be attacked. And each time it was either extortion or harassment. That's why she instinctively felt to hide herself.
No, he had to answer, or would she lose patience and beat him? No no, he wouldn't do that on the street and main road right now. But when night falls and it gets dark... he tears off his mask and a monster appears.
He replied in a weak voice.
"I have no family"
The woman squinted, as if satisfied with her answer, grabbed her wrist, and muttered a few words in an unconvincing tone as she dragged him along.
"Come, let me show you a place to stay"
"They serve food there, you have a place to stay and you can be friends with other kids"
He didn't need to walk, he was officially kidnapped during the day. The dragged boy winced, knowing that the woman had lied to him.
Making friends with the kids? Even if he stayed on the street, he knew what it meant. And this is a reality far from them. An activity for children who are clearly pure and innocent, without responsibility.
How can the orphans, who have troubles in life and livelihood, dare to do this without the protection and wing of their family?
The so-called friends of the children there are subordinate relations and the employees there knowingly incite them. Because we need people who can break what they hold, who are skilled in surviving first and who have this potential. The rest are soon eliminated by artificial selection.
He knew now that there was no choice or escape from here.
Unfortunately, it didn't get a proper port for 4 years. Adopted by every family because of his appearance and good behavior, he will be abandoned without hesitation as long as his anti-normative mentality is discovered and he opens his mouth and presents his ideas.
As a result of not being able to blend in with those children both in terms of appearance and socially, it will become a tool of gossip as an entertainment element to be mocked in everyone's language and will become an interesting object of bullying.
His repeated return to the orphanage made him blush and feel ashamed.
He didn't care for his words to some extent when it was mocked, they were useless after all, yet he couldn't get over these vile feelings. Being targeted by his peers for 4 years already made him willing to become a dim, invisible person once again with his introverted personality.
This torture ended with him identifying and step-by-step elimination of these causes each time he was left behind, turning himself into a seemingly perfect, innocent child.
He kept his inner thoughts perfectly to himself and blurred even his seemingly perverted personality in order to put him at the most advantageous position in society.
As a result, he was adopted by a really good family.
This family made him experience love, warmth and emotions he had never experienced before. He became greedy for these beautiful and warm moments and never wanted to wake up if this was a dream.
Because the looks that look at him for the first time are not because they are a target, but are soft affectionate touches. Warm hands gently caressing his head and pleasant words are so-called truths that he has never heard or experienced before.
In order not to lose this sense of being cared for, this life, he tightly concealed his inner self and almost became a master at it.
It was all too late when the long-wearing mask became his true face and a complete identity crisis took place.
He hid this with fear, and he was conscious that the people of the world he lived in did not accept his existence.
Even if he leaves the orphanage, it only sums up the real face of the people he sees in a few years, the unwanted people being abandoned, disappearing or, in a more honest term, left to die, or getting rid of the useless to save food and expenses!
He knew, his existence must have a purpose.
He was an intelligent and perceptive child, so he adapted quickly.
And he was conscious of the fact that what these people, every adoptive family need, is a small, cute, naive little boy who doesn't know about life. So without thinking, he offered them what they wanted. It was indistinguishable from a business deal. You had to be able to give in order to receive.
He ate his own self and gave them a fake smile.
He offered what they wanted to those who wanted to hear lies, not rotten truths. So he could get what he wanted.
Although these feelings are fake...
How much ground could truths born of lies have? It was nothing more than a wound that wore him down more and more as time passed. Clearly this wound should have been opened and treated, but he hid it until it was filled with pus and inflammation and the flesh rotted and wilted.
Even if it's fake.
This is not the luxury of appearances, but the things that this family lives in, the feelings that he cannot let go.
When she commuted to school and pretended to be a normal person like everyone else, she realized why she was different from everyone else and why she was dropped out again and again.
It was normal for him to stink when he was mentally ill, paranoid, and emerged from a cesspool where all people vomit their filth. He sprayed perfume and hid his true scent. He covered his face with a fake mask. But that never changed the fact that he was actually filthy, as the odor became more foul and difficult to deal with over time, while the face under the mask sank more into darkness, making him an indistinct, indistinctly blurred person.
This was the very definition of the situation he was in.
Just like its name.
He's just someone.
Just a person whose gender, age, personality do not matter, uncertain, changeable and not belonging to him, where the boundaries between truth and lies are blurred.
Since there was only one person, it could have been anyone.
It's like the incarnation of a hideous monster hidden under a human mask.
No matter how fake, that thing is like a sun that is always impossible to get. It illuminates the night and suppresses all darkness.
And every good thing is short.
It should not be forgotten that where there is light, there is also shadow.
When her family is subjected to a conspiracy by her uncle, less than a year after her adopters. Encountering this situation for the first time shook his unstable mood and for a moment made him indecisive about which mask to wear.
Notify the police?
He was just a 14-year-old boy and he knew that, on the streets, the police are the most mischievous thing. He belittles them, is the enemy of the homeless, and makes their job harder.
They also have their fair share of truth. So-called moral rules lose their meaning in the face of life, and people in that normal society are unaware of it.
Even in Maslow's pyramid of needs, so-called emotions come after the meal.
Physiological needs (food, water, reproduction, breathing, excretion and health) come first, then safety needs, including morality.
This family, on the other hand, welcomed him the third step of the pyramid, the love and the sense of belonging.
Despite this, he was cursed to never, ever reach Step 4.
Self-esteem, self-confidence, success...
...to be respected by others, to respect others.
And, it is impossible for him to experience these feelings without revealing his true self. Because even if he is really praised, everyone unknowingly expresses how well he did and how well he acted.
As a result, his own self is blurry and indistinct due to being highly adaptable to the environment he is in and taking the shape of every container he enters. For this reason, no one will ever appreciate and know their true self, and he who is deeply aware of it will hide it on his own initiative.
In the situation he is in, this behavior has now become an indispensable survival attitude and he can neither get rid of it nor avoid fully assimilation.
As a result, he was trapped in a situation that could never achieve this dignity.
The words he heard in class one day cracked his mask for a moment and he was faced with his own self.
"Like the sun in love,
be like a stream in friendship and brotherhood,
night to cover up mistakes,
be like earth in humility,
be dead in anger
whatever you are,
Either appear as you are or be as you look.
-Mevlana"
He muttered with mixed thoughts in his blurry, hazy, and lifeless eyes.
"Either appear as you are or be as you appear"
It was probably what it seemed, but that thought was wrong. The identity crisis was more severe than he thought, and it was never what it seemed, nor what it seemed to be.
As time passed, the mask wore off, and so did his spirit.
He fell into the middle of an existential crisis when his family abandoned him. There was no one to support him anymore, and even his existence seemed to be fading away.
Even his uncle called him "hey you" without knowing his name. Sometimes he says degenerate, sometimes p.c. But he never says his name.
Moreover, his uncle was also an unstable person.
He was alone, the presence of other people did not obscure his presence, and he became an obvious target. This sense of crisis was about to drive him crazy and collapse.
For a moment, he wanted to tear off the mask that was sticking to his face and reveal his ugly self.
Even he didn't know what was under that mask.
But he did not dare. Because once it was revealed, he felt that there was no other way to suppress it. His imam, his head, would fall apart like a broken rosary.
And it would become a more and more perverted self with the feelings and thoughts that emerged once, that were unacceptable to the whole world and that had no place here, and would be left alone in a state of being uncontrollable.
Therefore, he continued to deceive himself, even if he was no one else, even to begin with himself.
He was on the verge of destruction when his real family found him, and this family conversation was the final blow that forced him into destruction.
Because his adopted family had dealt him the biggest blow, they left his life and left him alone in the world. He was abandoned once again, even in death, even unknowingly.
He had the feeling of falling from heaven to hell in an instant, and his soul was too fragile to bear the repeat of it once again.
He was afraid of experiencing the same thing again.
And he was also jealous of their happiness...
He hated it. From the world he is in, from this family, from these people, from everything, but most of all himself. And when the mask finally cracked, it collapsed with emotional instability, losing the last bit of logic in the chaotic mind, which was like hell in the presence of different people and identities.
With the surname Huai, inherited from his adoptive family.
Huai(Bad).
As a result, the worst of fiction was born.
The villain.
Huai Nanren.
-To be continued-